


Transitions Book 1

by lisajames85



Category: Stingers (1998)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 20:37:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 91,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7985407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisajames85/pseuds/lisajames85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the future of Melbourne's elite undercover unit is cast in doubt, Detective Senior Sergeant Ellen Mackenzie will go undercover for perhaps the final time, in a case that could have grave consequences for Mac and her team, all of whom will need to take time to reassess where they belong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

ONE

Ellen Mackenzie hurried along the inner city paved footpath on her way to the café. Her thick scarf and long coat were wrapped tightly around her, her arms were crossed tightly and her head lowered against the winter morning drizzle. It was a Friday and if there had been sun that day it would have barely risen, so there were fewer people than usual on the streets to crowd her path. Ellen was glad she had dressed casually for her weekly breakfast meeting. Her suit and silk blouse and good shoes were in her car, parked in the city garage opposite police headquarters, but they weren’t needed for a couple of hours and it was much more sensible to be walking through the rain without an umbrella in jeans and secure boots and a wool sweater. 

Ellen pulled her straight, shoulder length, chocolate brown hair out of its clip as the rain got heavier; it was a sort of weather shield like an umbrella, right? Head down, she quickened her steps to a jog, to the end of the street and around the corner. 

Of course Peter Church had remembered his umbrella. He was standing outside the café in jeans and a coat of his own, with one gloved hand wrapped around his umbrella and the other shoved into his coat pocket. The dim yellow lights beneath the business’ awnings picked up the natural golden flecks that still tinged his greying brown hair, and as she jogged towards him and he saw her he started laughing. 

“Forget something this morning, Mac?” he called out. “You could have called for an umbrella-wielding escort, or parked across the street.”

“I wanted to get a good car park,” Ellen answered in a chilled huff as he stretched his free arm out and guided her beneath the cover. She took a deep breath once the rain began pelting the umbrella and not her face, and she reached up with bare hands to comb and tuck her hair behind her ears and wipe the drops of water from her cheeks. Peter ran a gloved fingertip down her nose to do the same and she blushed as she glanced into his smiling, clear blue eyes. “Thanks,” she said. “You would think I’d know by now that when they say drizzle they really mean quite heavy rain.”

“You’ve got a lot of other stuff going on besides having to worry about the weather,” Peter said. “Important, difficult, stressful decisions that every Detective Senior Sergeant must make…like pancakes, or bacon and eggs?”

“Oh, that’s not hard,” Ellen said with a laugh as she left the safety of the dry umbrella to make the short journey to the safety of the café’s awning. Peter put his umbrella down and gave it a few shakes as he joined her, and she grinned and wrapped both her arms around one of his, holding onto the sleeve of his coat. “Always pancakes, Peter.”

“You shock me,” he said. “I vote we sit inside today. None of this alfresco business on the first weekend in winter.” They walked inside the dimly lit café, which was only half-full at ten past seven on a Friday morning, mostly with young professionals who lived in the apartment buildings above and nearby. Ellen gestured to their usual booth in the back that was free once again, furnished with dark wood and upholstery, and Peter picked up a couple of menus from the front counter and joined her. 

They both took off their damp coats and sat down either side of the table’s back corner. Huddling around the corner in the booth wasn’t the most professional arrangement, but nor was it the most intimate. It meant they could talk more privately about work if they wanted, and Peter preferred to sit directly opposite the coats and his umbrella and to have Ellen those few inches closer anyway. It felt friendlier, and safer. Peter watched her unravel the thick scarf from her neck and took a second while her head was turned to admire the red sweater he had never seen her in before. 

Ellen set the scarf beside her and turned towards Peter just in time to see his eyes drifting up the v-line of her sweater towards her damp hair and neck, and she raised her eyebrows and smirked.

“You’re about to say something about me not being in a suit, aren’t you,” she said in a droll voice. She picked up the menu – a laminated piece of cardboard – and lightly smacked him over the hands with it. “I don’t have to be at HQ until nine o’clock, it was cold and raining when I woke up, and it feels awkward when I’m sitting here in a suit and you’re in your usual plain clothes.” 

“I wasn’t going to make you uncomfortable,” Peter said with a gentle smile. “I was going to say you look beautiful in what you’re wearing, Elle.”

“That’s not supposed to make me uncomfortable?” Ellen replied immediately with a raised brow and a playful smirk. Peter hesitated until she reached beneath the table and gave his thigh a firm squeeze through his jeans. “Thank you,” she added softly. His hand covered hers and held her palm in place for longer. 

It was the ninety minutes out of every week where Ellen felt most like a normal person, like one of the dozen other people in the café who had steady, sensible jobs and who got to enjoy weekends and festivals and nights at the movies with friends. Until Peter had come up with this weekly breakfast idea, Ellen had almost forgotten that the four undercover operatives she worked with were her friends first. After five years of being their boss and even longer working with them it was sometimes hard to tell. They didn’t socialise anymore, that had been Peter’s point, or more specifically, Ellen no longer socialised with them. ‘I want to change that for us,’ he’d said. 

This was breakfast number four, and it was the first morning that she didn’t feel guilty about sitting with him tucked away in a private booth holding hands. It was the first morning where she had woken up and really looked forward to seeing him outside of the old commercial warehouse in which their undercover unit went about its business, to talk over pancakes about nonsense things like something they’d heard on the news or what was happening in the wide world of sport or, Heaven forbid, they could talk about work and their future. Peter was still holding her hand beneath the table and Ellen turned her palm over to give that hand a proper squeeze. 

“You okay?” Peter asked as he split his attention between the menu and her face. 

“Yeah,” she said, ashamed when she heard her voice crack. Peter didn’t push her, he just kept holding onto her hand. “I realised something this morning,” she said to get his full attention. He turned in his seat to look at her and in doing so he let go of her hand and placed both on top of the menu in front of him. Ellen did the same and bit her bottom lip before continuing. She blushed, and laughed at the history she was about to dredge up for them both, but she wanted to say it. “I realised that Bernie Rocca really did a number on me all those years ago.”

“Our old boss?” Peter asked. He raised his eyebrows because it had been so long since anyone had even mentioned Bernie’s name. It had been about five years since Bernie had taken an early retirement after being shot, and Ellen had accepted the promotion from second-in-charge to head honcho. Their colleagues Angie and Oscar still remembered him of course, but Danni had never worked with him, and as far as Peter knew no one had seen or heard from him again. They never spoke about him.

“Yes,” Ellen said. “He hasn’t been our boss for five years and yet for the past few weeks I’ve still felt really guilty about meeting you for breakfast. I have thought about us doing something like this on and off for years, as friends or something more or whatever, but every time I thought the timing was right for us, that Italian accent was in my head, accusing me of using my position of power to seduce you and if I want to keep my job I should think again and keep up those professional boundaries, or else.”

“Is that what he said to you seven years ago when he found out about our uh, what should we call it? Our year-long, motel-hopping, terrific casual sex, no-strings fling?”

“Maybe we can work on an abbreviation?” Ellen asked with a laugh as Peter wiggled his eyebrows playfully. “God, that started eight years ago? I never told you the details, did I? That’d be right, I was gutted. I felt like the naughty young girl hauled in front of the principal for a good scolding. He gave me the look, and a lecture about professionalism, and told me that I could either transfer out or stay and end it. It didn’t matter how I felt, I had my orders. It worked out in the end, I made the right decision, but I’m still thinking like him, still threatening myself, and I shouldn’t be.”

“Definitely not,” Peter said. “Mac, Ellen, you only figured that out this morning?”

“Yeah,” Ellen said as she winced in the face of his teasing smirk. “Or at least, today was the first day I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and told hypothetical Bernie inside my head to fuck off so I could relax, because I was happy, these breakfasts make me happy, and I wanted to see you and it has got nothing to do with work. Or him.”

“Thank Christ for that,” Peter said with a laugh as he gestured to the menu. “Let’s order, and then we can talk. I’ve been looking at real estate, and I want your advice.”

Ellen gave him her order and stayed seated as he headed for the counter. She smiled as she watched him patiently line up and flick through his wallet, not like an undercover cop on a surveillance mission, not like the almost-Sergeant who she was training in the administration and finances of undercover, but just like any middle-aged man about to order food. He hadn’t changed much in ten years, Ellen realised. 

Physically he still had strong, rounded shoulders and a fit but barrel-like torso that made him an imposing looking man if he put on the dark suit and sunnies and sidled up to major drug importers. He wasn’t tall, they were the same height if she wasn’t in heels, and in the day’s jeans and a neat checkered shirt he could have passed for an old lady’s next door neighbour; the neighbour that old lady might say had a cute bum. 

Peter was a good person too, and Ellen could only see in hindsight how lonely she had been without his closeness and his steady counsel. They had been drifting for years; still friends, but friends-without-trying, friends-just-because. The only consolation was that it was now obvious to her that keeping things purely professional never suited Peter either. He had been as lonely as her, and he had missed talking to her just as much, even though they had worked together for up to sixteen hours a day, six days a week, for ten years. She was struggling not to think of them as wasted years. 

“What’s on the cards for today?” Peter asked as he returned to his seat after ordering. “Covert Services manager’s meeting?”

“Yes. Then I’m meeting with Jeff in Sex Crimes to make sure he has the finer details of our op starting tonight, starring Angie and yours truly-”

“Excited?” Peter asked with a knowing smirk. It had been more than three years since Ellen went undercover, even undercover on pure surveillance, and ever since realising how stressed and under-pressure she was, something he understood much better since she began training him, he had been waiting for a briefing when he could pipe up and publically announce that she should do it. Four of the five women who had been attacked in that park over the past two months were brunettes, and with Angie and Danni keeping their hair neat shades of bottle-blonde, Ellen was the perfect choice. 

“Very excited,” she said. “I miss it. I might not get another chance.”

“I know.” Peter looked at her with understanding blue eyes. Ellen smiled, but he saw an anxiety in her face that had nothing to do with the op. She wasn’t the only one. 

*

Oscar Stone closed his locker while he held his phone to his ear mid-conversation, and waved at his friend and colleague Angie Piper as she entered the locker room, soaking wet in her tights and sports bra after a run through the rain. She was grinning like the crazy woman the run proved that she was, she opened her own locker and began removing a towel and her toiletries and a change of clothes.

“What do you really know about her then mum?” he asked as he frowned and turned to use his locker as a prop. “And the wedding’s in two weeks? That’s mental! He’s lost his mind.”

‘Who?’ Angie mouthed, wide-eyed. 

‘Brad,’ Oscar replied silently, watching as a look of surprise swept over her fair face. She was the only one in the team who had met both of his brothers, Brad being the youngest, and he knew that she remembered him even though it had been six years since they met, back when his family had thought that Angie was his steady non-police girlfriend called Michelle. His fault. 

“I don’t know mum,” Oscar said warily. “We’ve been really busy here-”

Angie grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt and hissed, “You have to go to your brother’s wedding”, accompanied by a wide-eyed, do-as-I-say glare. Oscar playfully batted her hand away as he rolled his eyes, because as Angie smirked and returned to her open locker she added, “And tell your mum I said hi”.

Ahah, revenge, Oscar thought when an idea occurred to him. 

“What was that mum?” he asked. “Sorry, Michelle just walked into work-” He laughed when Angie threw her towel at him and it hit him in the face. “Two weeks?” he asked when his mother ignored his teasing and kept talking. Opposite him, Angie was sniggering into her locker and made no move to hide the fact that she was now also eavesdropping. “I don’t know mum, it’s a long time for me to be away from work at short notice, but I can ask. What does dad reckon about all this? This girl’s kind of a big deal, isn’t she?”

‘Who is she?’ Angie mouthed. ‘Who’s he marrying? Someone famous?’

Oscar shook his head. He gestured for her phone and she removed it from her locker and handed it to him. He walked over to the benches, put her phone on the bench and crouched on the cement floor in front of it, so that he could type into the phone’s internet browser with one hand and keep talking to his mother on his own phone thanks to the other. 

“Whoa!” he said when a picture came up and Angie hurriedly crouched beside him to also look at the tiny screen. 

“Oh, you meant a big deal in the beef world!” she said as she picked up the phone and sat in its place. Oscar rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah mum, Ange and I just pulled up the family website. Is she the one with the red curly hair? We’ve never had anything to do with that empire. How’d they meet?”

“Victoria Webster,” Angie read out in a posh voice. “She’s gorgeous.”

Oscar laughed and said, “Oh, they met online? Classic.” He poked Angie’s knee after a few seconds and added, “Mum says she’s worried this Victoria is not as gorgeous as you. There you go, your compliment for the day.”

“Aw, thanks Shirley!” Angie said happily a bit more loudly so that Oscar’s mum could hear. It had been six years since she had seen Shirley too, but it still felt recent. 

“Has Brad given you any reason why he’s getting married so fast? He just packed up and left for a visit a month ago and never came back? That’s so unlike him.”

Angie frowned as she listened to Oscar’s side of the conversation. 

“And does Shane know?” he asked. “Is he coming back from Queensland for the wedding or is he stuck in the mines by this month’s roster? …I see, well thanks for calling me, since Brad obviously didn’t. I’ll talk to Mac about time off and get back to you as soon as I can…Yes, I’ll tell Ange you said hi and you’re thinking of her-” He met Angie’s eyes and smiled. “Oh, sure mum, that’d be nice. Yep, bye mum. Bye!”

“What is going on in your usually quiet, nothing-much-happens farming family?” Angie asked as soon as he hung up. “Shane’s in Queensland? Brad’s engaged?”

“Shane moved out about six months ago. He got sick of not using his trade qualifications and he and dad had a big falling out over the farm and about dad not looking after his health,” Oscar said. “I didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Angie said as she innocently shook her head. “They’re not speaking?”

“It’s probably as bad for them as it was for me and dad when I decided to leave the farm and join the police when I was eighteen,” Oscar said. “Shane’s just thirty-two. And, well, you heard the rest. Brad’s getting married. He’s buggered off to whoop-whoop South Australia to live with this woman and her family, who own one of the biggest cattle breeding operations in the country and they’re worth a small fortune. The wedding’s in two weeks, which is the first I’m hearing about any sort of relationship. Mum and dad are stunned. They want me to look after the property for a few weeks while they travel to SA to spend some time with this woman and her family. The first daughter-in-law…dad’s freaking out that Brad’s been ‘sucked in’.”

“I’m sure she’s lovely, Oscar,” Angie said as she watched Oscar sit down on the cement floor at her feet. She smiled at him pointedly. “I hope you told your mum that too, and Mac should give you the time off, no worries.”

“It’s just bizarre news to get on a Friday morning,” Oscar said. “I spoke to mum two weeks ago and she didn’t say anything about Brad not being there, but apparently he’d already been gone a few weeks. That’s all the time he’s ever spent with this woman…getting married within six weeks of meeting your partner, is that odd?”

“Well if they started a relationship online first, maybe not,” Angie said. “It’s fast, but that’s never happened to me and you’re not married either, so what do we know?”

“Brad has always worn his heart on his sleeve and gone a bit ga-ga over girls,” Oscar said with a thoughtful frown. “Or at least he was that way when I was eighteen and he was thirteen and I left for the city. He was always the kid who had a new girlfriend for every new year of school…in a cute little kid way, not a sleazy way, but as an adult he hasn’t dated much at all. No one serious. I wonder if he’s still so innocent?”

“Well, Pierce boys are anything but sleazy,” Angie said with a wise laugh. “Cam.”

“Oi. Only my parents and my brothers call me that, and now I have to go and be a farmer for a few weeks. Mum hasn’t said anything but she’s secretly hoping I’ll enjoy it because dad’s not well…Honestly Ange, warning bells, ringing in my head.”

“You’ll be fine.” Angie stood and patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll be relaxing.” She smirked as Oscar laughed and shook his head. He had told her the same thing the one time he took Michelle home for a visit. They were almost killed on that trip. Relaxing.


	2. Chapter 2

TWO

Danni moved from the driver’s seat into the back of the communications and surveillance van that evening, to join Peter as he handed her a set of headphones.

“This is going to be a waste of time,” she said as she blew a strand of dark blonde hair off her face and sat on a small chair beside him. In front of them both was a narrow bench with video screens, a computer and official police listening and recording equipment. “You’re much better at this than you used to be,” she said as she watched Peter setting up. They still had ten minutes before Angie was going to appear. 

“Some of this new tech is easier than it used to be,” Peter said. He smirked in her direction and added, “And I’ve been a copper for twenty-six years so don’t give me too much credit.”

Danni laughed and offered him a toothy grin as she stretched out and lifted the logbook from its pouch on the wall. Above them the rain fell in thumping wet drops.

“We’re losing light fast out there,” Danni said as she watched through one of the surveillance cameras that they had installed in the park the previous day. They could see the bend in the path and the scrub where the victims had been assaulted, some dragged all the way in, some dragged just to the edge, always in the evening or just after nightfall, and always without any other person witnessing the attacks. 

“It’s a shocking day for it,” Peter said. “I will never complain about being on surveillance when it’s as cold and wet as this, but the two worst or most prolonged assaults happened on wet nights, when there wasn’t so much of a need for our pervert to rush because there were less people around, so here we are, no matter what.”

“Well hopefully nothing goes wrong tonight,” Danni said with a chuckle. “Do you have that top right camera working yet?” she asked as she pointed to one of the eight camera views that was nothing but black and white fuzziness, like an old TV.

“Give me a sec,” Peter said as he tried to fix the connection. A flick of a couple of switches to reset the screens and an image flickered to life, and kept flickering. “There might be some water in it,” Peter said with a sigh. “But that’s okay, it’s not the path that Mac and Ange will be taking, it’s the view across the lawn looking towards the north-west soccer fields and we’ve got a clear enough view for the time being.”

“Good,” Danni said. “Speaking of Mac, do you think it’s weird she told us to hold off on our job with Lachie for Drug Squad at this afternoon’s briefing?”

“Lachie’s small time. Drug Squad wants big time.”

“He says he can get us bigger quantities, but I guess it’s doubtful he’s got the balls to make the connections we need to bust the big guys. Is that what they’re thinking?”

“Pretty much,” Peter said as he flicked a switch to speak to the microphone in Angie’s headset. “Ange, you’re good to go, we’re ready when you are. Copy?”

“I hear you,” Angie replied, though her voice crackling through the speakers was almost drowned out by the sound of the rain on the tinny van. Peter lifted the volume so that there was no risk of not hearing her if something happened, but the risk was low. The aim for the night was to start establishing a routine that they could continue over a couple of weeks, to keep an eye on the rest of the public as well as to identify any suspicious behaviour. 

“There she is,” Danni said as she pointed to the camera that caught Angie entering the gardens at a light jog. Angie’s light blonde hair was pulled back in a bun and she was wearing a crop top and running shorts, and her second pair of running shoes since the first pair had gotten so wet on her actual run that morning. “She puts us to shame, you realise,” Danni said. 

Peter chuckled and nodded. He was fit, he ran, he even swam, but Angie had taken her fitness to another level in the last few years. She really ran. Peter was pretty sure it was a way to challenge herself and a way to keep her mind off some of the more horrific aspects of their job, but she had transformed into a petite, lean, pocket rocket. 

“We’re doing okay Danni,” he said to the tall, busty, curvaceous woman sitting beside him. He remembered their brief affair four years earlier, he remembered telling her why it had to end. ‘Mac knows,’ he’d said, and then he’d explained why it mattered. Thankfully, Ellen wasn’t Bernie. She hadn’t held it against either of them. “Actually,” Pete said as his thoughts drifted to their boss, while he watched Angie making laps of the park on screen. “Wait until you see Mac take over this show. She’s been dying to put a good act on for a job, but running’s not her thing so it’s going to be very funny.”

“You’re mean,” Danni said in jest as she grinned sideways at him. Peter chuckled and sat back in his chair to wait. Angie spent half an hour running around the park, and then they allowed a twenty-minute break to simply monitor activity, but the rain and lack of sunlight made it difficult to see anyone lurking, and Angie confirmed as much.

“Guys, there’s no one here,” she said into the mouthpiece in her headphones while holding one of her legs bent back towards her bum. She was taking time to stretch and have a good look around from a vantage point in the centre of the park, as they had planned. “It’s cold, I’m saturated, and I only saw a group of three joggers finishing up when I got here, and a woman walking her dog. Nothing suspicious on the bend. The cameras are hard to see though, which is good. Less chance of scaring him off.”

“Good job Angie,” Peter said. “That’s fine for tonight. You can pull back. We’ll be about an hour behind you.”

“See you back at the factory,” she said. “I’ll head back down via the bend one more time, establish that as my pathway out of here. Keep me in your sights.”

“We’ve got you mate,” Peter assured her. 

“Should we give it half an hour or so?” Danni asked as they watched Angie leave via the well-placed screens in front of them. “See if anyone actually enters this space?”

“Mm,” Peter said, just as he watched two men in tracksuits pass Angie on her way out of the gardens. One of them turned to look at her over his shoulder as she carried on, back to her car. Peter tapped the screen. “Like this?” he asked. The two men walked into the park and onto the same pathway they were concentrating on.

“Mac, did you see that exchange?” Danni asked once she picked up the radio transmitting to Ellen’s unmarked police car. 

“Copy that Danni, Angie’s just pulling out now,” she replied. “What are they doing?”

“Walking the track,” Danni said. “One’s holding a striped umbrella, white and black or white and navy. Dark tracksuits, light sneakers, hands in pockets. They’re not moving fast.”

“Tell me when they’ve turned on the bend so that we’d be walking towards each other and I’ll go in,” Ellen said. The victims had only ever said there was one attacker, but with their varied descriptions that didn’t mean two people weren’t working in a pair.

Peter scoffed and drew Danni’s attention back to the screen, where the two men had actually stopped in the middle of the bend, right by the scenes of the attacks. One of them had lit a cigarette and was smoking beneath the cover of the umbrella. 

“No one’s that stupid, right?” Peter asked. 

“Mac, they’re just standing on the path having a smoke,” Danni said. “We’ve got a good view. You can move in when you’re ready. Take it easy.”

“Copy that,” Ellen said as she put her radio away and secured her baseball cap on her head. She made sure her ponytail was sticking out the hollow at the back of the cap; it was a tease, meant to make it seem easier for someone to grab her from behind. She got out of the car and locked it securely before starting a slow jog in the rain towards the park. 

On the screens in the communications van, Danni chuckled once Ellen was in view.

“You’re right Pete, running’s not her thing.”

“Shh,” Peter said with a laugh as he watched Ellen shuffle along trying to look as unfit as possible. She was of course meant to be Angie’s opposite, and was dressed in cheap tracksuit pants and a baggy grey t-shirt that was already clinging to her slender figure. Thanks to their breakfasts and the extra hours he was spending with her on various management tasks, Peter had discovered that when Ellen had the time – and when she had been eating well enough to have the energy – she went to pilates classes at the gym or to her local pool, but she hated running, and she had watched Angie’s growing obsession for the sport with the same bemused interest as the rest of them. 

Peter sighed, because from where he was sitting, even if she was hamming it up in her tracksuit pants and t-shirt and baseball cap, she looked to him like a gentle, feminine, friendly dork, and it was beautiful the way she flopped her hands about as she jogged.

“You’d never guess this woman could kick our asses on the martial arts mat,” Danni pointed out. “Tell me she doesn’t really run like that.”

“Mac’s just having fun,” Peter said without really answering the question. 

Danni snorted as she tried to hide her laugh. Five years in undercover and she still learned something new about the people she worked with every day. Of course, Ellen didn’t go undercover every day, and fun wasn’t the one word that most people would choose to describe her if given the opportunity. This was almost a special event, and it made Danni smile to think that Ellen trusted them both enough to let them tape it.

“I don’t suppose Mac’s had a lot of fun in the last few years,” she said to Peter. “Does she know about her surprise party yet?”

“That would defeat the purpose of it being a surprise, Danni,” Peter said with a wry smirk. “I certainly haven’t told her, and I’ve blocked out the time in her diary as last minute study for my Sergeant’s exam. She thinks it’s the next day so she won’t cancel on me, but really it’s the following week.”

“Clever man,” Danni said with a broad, toothy grin as she turned her full attention back to Ellen, who was finally about to approach the bend where the two men were still standing right in the middle of the path. “Do you think they’re having a deep and meaningful out there in the rain?” she asked Peter softly in a playful, wistful voice. 

“They’re probably smoking pot because they can’t get away with it in their apartment,” Peter said on a huff as he focused in on the vision as well. He hit the switch to activate Ellen’s communication device. “Mac, you’re close, slow it down.”

“She can’t go much slower,” Danni mumbled under her breath as Peter reached out to playfully silence her. 

“Copy that,” Ellen replied over the scratchy transmission.

*

Ellen slowed to a walk and put her hands on her hips as she reached the bend in the path, as though she was out of breath and bothered by the rain. The last part was definitely true. It was no heavier than it had been that morning at breakfast, but Ellen was wearing fewer clothes and it was cold enough to trigger a genuine chill that she felt deep in her chest. Water trickled off the end of her baseball cap and it was soaking into her socks and shoes. She could feel it squelching with every step. 

At the bend, Ellen initially approached the duo in the otherwise deserted part of the park as warily as any other woman might. Her pace at first faltered, her fingers dug that fraction more tightly into the flare of her hips, but they didn’t see her at first. Their tall, lanky bodies were turned away from her and it would have been difficult to hear her footsteps in the rain. Ellen stopped walking; she hesitated with a thoughtful stare in their direction as water trickled from her ears to her lips, and decided not to give them a wide berth. 

Trudge onwards, she thought, like an overworked, unfit, fraught woman on a mission!

“Evening,” she said in a friendly, frazzled voice as she brushed passed them with inches to spare, like one of those walkers who were not willing to move off the path and onto the shoulder for any reason. No obstacle was too large to skirt around. 

The smell of tobacco hung in the damp air around the two men as they flinched, startled, and Ellen made sure to look them both in the eyes and smile as she passed. 

“Bit wet tonight,” she said. “Out for a smoke?”

“Yeah, fresh air,” one of them said. He had dark eyes and olive skin, a long, thin face and a brown beard with a thin moustache. His companion was a few inches shorter but thinner and hunched, with pale skin and plump light pink lips. 

“Are we in your way?” the pale one asked, as Ellen backed away as though she was keen to continue walking but also keen to finish the brief conversation properly. 

“No, it’s fine, I’ll do my loop further in and come back. You’ll probably be long gone, there’s no point lingering in this weather, but enjoy the rain while it lasts.”

“Thanks, you too,” the taller man with the beard said. 

Ellen smiled, then turned and carried on along the pre-planned route that Peter and Danni were following along with via the set of security cameras they had installed, based on the previous attacks and the general routines of the women involved. She kept her pace at that of a mediocre shuffle and smiled when she realised she felt relaxed. She was cold, but at ease with the operation. She was a real police officer again, and at almost thirty-seven years old she was pleased that she could still do it. 

Whereas Angie had run the two kilometre loop three times inside her allocated half an hour, in the rain, Ellen was going to settle for just doing it once, nice and slowly, so that anyone watching could see that she liked to take her time. Their culprit wasn’t picky about the speed or fitness levels of the runners and walkers he was snatching off the path, and Ellen and Angie were on opposite ends of the spectrum, both naturally and with a little exaggeration thrown in for good measure. 

Ellen knew that of the two of them, in clothes of their own choosing, Angie was the one who most looked like a cop. It was obvious that night thanks to the way she ran and the gear she was running in, and that was fine. Angie had her headphones on and her head down and she appeared to the outside world to be distracted that way. It was perfect. It was also why Angie went first and the sloppier, slower Ellen came next, after the super-fit blonde who could totally pass for a cop in disguise had left. 

Ellen started to sing softly to herself as she put one foot in front of the other and continued to be soaked to the skin. Her breath and her voice shook in the cold.

“Having fun Mac?” Peter chirped in her ear. The cordless two-way earpiece was stuck firmly into her ear and was taped down inside the shell using clear, waterproof tape, to stop it becoming slippery and falling out. Anything she said or that was said nearby was picked up by the microphone and bounced back to the communications van to be recorded, but if Peter or Danni wanted to talk to her they had to flick a switch. 

“I’m so cold right now,” Ellen sang softly in reply, to a tune of her own making. “I hate running so much.”

“But you love your job,” Peter answered, laughing. “Your new friends are still on the path, having a laugh by the looks of it. We’re reading you loud and clear.”

“Copy that, I’m nearly at the halfway mark. Any requests?”

“Anything Goes, Ella Fitzgerald,” Peter replied after a moment’s thought, leaving the line open long enough so that she could hear Danni laughing beside him and asking, ‘What the hell is that?’ 

“Ha-ha, be careful what you wish for, I only know the chorus,” Ellen answered as she kept an eager eye on her surroundings during her slow shuffle towards the halfway mark where she would turn around and go back. It was still raining, it had become completely dark in the last twenty minutes, and there was not a soul in sight beside the two under their umbrella nearly a full kilometre away. Ellen was feeling decidedly upbeat and unlike her usual reserved self. She happily took a breath to launch into a song she truthfully remembered very well. At least it fit with her slow, steady pace. 

“The world has gone mad today, and good’s bad today, and black’s white today, and day’s night today, when those guys today, that women prize today, are just silly gigolos. So though I’m not a great romancer, I know that I’m bound to answer, when you propose…anything goes. The world has gone mad today, and good’s bad today, and black’s white today, and day’s night today, when those guys today, that women prize today, are just silly gigol-”

“Oh yeah,” Danni said in her ear all of a sudden. “That’s going to attract the crazies. Hurry back Mac, the online radar says the rain’s about to get a lot heavier.”

“Ta. Looping back now,” Ellen assured them as she abandoned her attempt to get to the halfway point and simply turned around on the path to go back the way she came. As much as she hated it, and she was wet and tired, she picked up the pace and ran like she had when she was training at the academy fifteen years earlier. She didn’t slow down until she got to the bend, where the two men and their umbrella remained.

“It’s getting heavier I think,” Ellen said in a false but believably panicked, harried voice as she passed. She was back in character and they recognised her. “Night!”

“Yeah, see ya,” one of them said, their heads better hidden beneath the umbrella. Ellen chuckled, shrugged in their direction, and turned to run down the end of the path towards the southeast entrance to the gardens and to her warm, secure car.

Inside the communications van, Danni glanced at Peter and smirked. 

“I knew she could run,” she said.


	3. Chapter 3

THREE

“Thanks for coming,” Ellen said when she answered her door just past midnight. She had only been home for an hour, and was wrapped in a thick dressing gown after a long, hot shower. She stood aside to let Peter into her house and then shut and locked the door, and turned the front porch light off so that it didn’t bother any of her neighbours. “What’s that?” she asked of the green shopping bag that Peter was carrying. She hadn’t asked him to bring anything; she just wanted to talk about work before they both had to actually be at work mid-morning the next day.

“Presents,” Peter said as he walked into her open plan kitchen and living area, and put the bag on her kitchen bench. Ellen walked closer to observe. He retrieved a large stainless steel thermos to begin with. “Hot chocolate,” he said. “Made with real chocolate, because I know how to do that now-”

“Ooh,” Ellen whispered with genuine excitement, as with a flourish Peter retrieved the other item in the bag, a rolled up piece of black cloth. 

“And this,” he said. “Well it looks like a rag but it’s actually a thin thermal blanket or you can use it as a shawl, and you can wrap it around yourself tonight when you go to bed so you don’t get sick from the rain. I saw how wet and cold you and Ange were when we got back to the factory, I wasn’t sure a hot shower was gonna cut it.”

“Thank you Peter,” Ellen said, feeling herself gush as she sidled up to him and laid a hand on his upper arm. “Let me go and finish getting changed, and I’ll test it out over hot chocolate while we talk about work. You’re not too tired?”

“I’ve got a couple of hours left in me,” he assured her with a chuckle. After their midday briefing and before the operation, Ellen had dismissed them for a few hours in the afternoon, and Peter for one had gone home and had a nap. He knew Angie had a short sleep in the overnight room at the factory, and Danni and Ellen had disappeared as well. Oscar had stayed, but he hadn’t needed to work that night and had spent that time checking the equipment for the operation so that it ran smoothly in his absence.

Peter watched Ellen jog up the stairs, before ferretting around in her kitchen for two large mugs. He hadn’t actually been inside her house for years. This felt like a big deal to him. The last time he had been there was four years earlier, after her boyfriend of a few months, the then Head of Homicide Bill Hollister had been killed. Peter had delivered that news and had stayed. He had to go back another full year to remember the time before that, again when he spent the night on her couch, the night before she got the thankfully negative test results on an HIV exposed needle-stick injury she’d sustained weeks earlier. Peter always seemed to find himself in her home when she was in trouble, and that was fine, but it didn’t happen very often. Twice in ten years.

He just had not figured out whether this third time was good or bad news as well. 

Ellen returned a minute later in tights and a long-sleeved, baggy sweater. Her hair was dry and tucked neatly behind her ears, there was no need to put it up because she wasn’t at work, and she smiled at him when she realised he had found her mugs.

“They probably haven’t moved since you were here last time,” she said. 

“Same cupboard,” he assured her with a wise nod. He watched her pick the black blanket off the bench and she stretched it out to judge its size and thickness. “Trust me, it looks flimsy but it works,” he said. “It’s hemp.”

Ellen hummed in a satisfied way at that news, and she laid it around her neck and shoulders and let the ends fall down over the arms of her sweater. She silently watched Peter pour two mugs of hot chocolate and laughed when, from the bottom of the green shopping bag, he retrieved an actual block of dark chocolate. 

“A square for you, Detective?” he asked.

“Yes please. I feel like I’m on a picnic,” Ellen said with a laugh. 

“I take it this is more of a dining room table kind of conversation though?” Peter asked.

“I was going to suggest the couch. It is twenty past twelve in the middle of the night.”

Peter nodded and they crossed back towards the front of the house, where the living room sat partly between the front door and the dining room and kitchen. The couch was exactly where Peter remembered it, it was exactly the same, and nothing had changed in four years, which was a pretty easy achievement since there had been no artwork and no decoration other than the furniture to begin with. It was still sparse.

Peter had always found Ellen’s home an empty, lonely place, and it was strange because he knew that deep down Ellen was complex and arty. She was into photography, her biological mother was an artist, she liked jazz, and when she wore her personal plain clothes like she had that morning at breakfast there was often a subtle glimmer of funky cool, be it in a pair of boots or a necklace or black nail polish. She should have been one of those people that had a surprisingly modern, colourful and warm house with the odd quirky piece of artwork sitting on the mantelpiece, but instead her home was more like a modern but boring grey shell.

“Let’s get comfy,” he said anyway, pushing those thoughts aside as he put the mugs of chocolate down on the coffee table. Ellen had brought the block of chocolate over and she opened it and put it between the mugs, before curling up on her favourite end of the couch. She turned expectantly to where Peter was just sitting down, and then reached out to briefly rest her hand on his thigh. Peter smiled and looked into her deep blue eyes. He mirrored her position and leant forward. “So, what’s up boss?”

“I have good news and bad news,” she said. “I think I should probably start with the bad news. I wanted to talk to you about the manager’s meeting at HQ this morning.”

“Oh, we’re stuffed, aren’t we?” he asked. He only knew the rumours that Ellen had divulged in confidence, and he knew that morning meeting had been important. “I need hot chocolate for this.” He picked up their mugs and handed one to Ellen and kept one for himself. “Go on,” he said before taking a sip of the hot, creamy drink.

“It’s still highly confidential, but I need to tell you. I just don’t have anyone else I can talk to, to sound off with, but I don’t want Angie, Oscar or Danni to know just yet.”

“Understood Elle,” Peter assured her with an easygoing but cautious smile. “Go on.”

“A restructure is going ahead,” Ellen said quickly before she chickened out. “Drug Squad have a lot of sway with the Commissioner right now, there’s a huge policy push from the government to get a handle on the Ice epidemic, especially in regional towns outside of the city, and inside the city heroin is still a major problem on top of Ice and pills. They want more resources, and they’re going to get them.”

“Us?” Peter asked.

“Sort of. As you know, Drug Squad currently sits in Serious Crime Operations, Crime Command and we sit in Covert Services, Intelligence and Covert Support Command. Headquarters sees our job as becoming more technology driven and they want a smaller number of boots-on-the-ground operatives and more operatives who are more highly trained in cybercrime, auditing, online surveillance, intelligence, etcetera.”

“Are you saying I don’t have intelligence?” Peter asked with a raised brow. 

Ellen was halfway to swallowing a sip of hot chocolate and nearly choked at the prim old lady expression on his forty-six year old face. His square jaw was tight and his lips were pursed together in a thin line, but his light blue eyes were bright and playful, and the crow’s feet at either side gave away the fact that he was halfway to a smile. 

“What I mean,” she said as she coughed and he laughed. “Is that Covert Services Division as we know it is going to effectively be halved. Half will move to Serious Crime Operations, as part of a new Special Response to Drug Crimes Taskforce. The half that is staying will have updated training in online policing and will probably be split between State and Regional Intelligence and Surveillance Services.”

“So basically they’re gutting our entire division and splitting us four different ways.”

“Yes.”

“The Special Responses to Drug Crimes Taskforce,” Peter said on a sigh before he continued to drink. “Sounds fancy. Dare I ask which half our unit is in?” 

Ellen sighed and shut her eyes. She felt Peter staring at her. She reached out blindly for his arm that was lying along the back of the couch, stretched out between them. She wrapped her hand around the inside of his elbow, leant into the cushions, and opened her eyes to allow him to see the sadness she had been holding onto all day.

“It’s not a decision that’s being made on a unit basis,” she said softly. “It’s being made on personnel. That’s why I was in that meeting for two and a half hours, and it’s why after I got back to the factory and we talked about tonight I sent everyone home for a nap because I really needed some time on my own to process and to think. It was…a long and heated meeting, Peter. No one’s happy about having their units broken down and split off in chunks. And it’s probably no surprise that most managers, we’re talking Inspectors and Senior Sergeants like myself, want to get into that Taskforce, and they want their best operatives in the Taskforce, and not sitting in an office over in HQ. But there are a lot of questions still unanswered about when this is going to happen and how people are going to find out where they’re going and when we can tell staff it’s happening and how it will be publically announced.”

“You don’t know anything about us?”

“We get to recommend people for the Taskforce,” Ellen said softly. “It’s not a guarantee but I know that a recommendation I make will be taken seriously by the panel…which includes the newly appointed Inspector Reg Masters, remember him?”

“The Ferrett,” Peter said with a chuckle. “Yeah, I remember him, he used to be in Vice before he moved over to Drug Squad. He’s heading the Taskforce?”

“He’ll be in senior leadership in some way,” Ellen confirmed. “He was at the meeting today, and when he walked in we all just looked at each other and knew, this was it. At the end of the long meeting I managed to get five minutes alone with Reg, we go back you know? And he said he can’t tell me when it’s going to happen, but it’s June now, new financial year is just around the corner, so the answer to that question is sooner rather than later, maybe in August. A lot of money came out of our Command and went to Crime Command in the budget last month, and now we know why.”

“What’s the Taskforce going to do?” Peter asked. “Similar stuff to what we do now?”

“Yes, but with a pure focus on drugs state-wide. There are other undercover units in this city who do work exclusively with the Drug Squad, and they will be given preference in moving to the Taskforce, obviously. I’ve always liked us to be more, to do more, to work on a diverse range of cases and to interact with different branches, but in this case that doesn’t work in our favour. Or maybe it does, I don’t know.”

“That’s big news,” Peter said softly as he moved his hand off the back of the couch to squeeze her shoulder and the side of her neck that was resting against the cushion. She nuzzled him and shut her eyes. “You kept that to yourself all afternoon, I’m impressed. I thought the meeting had gone well, because you were so happy tonight.”

“I was acting,” Ellen said, smirking as she opened one eye and squeezed the other shut. “I’m an undercover cop. Gotcha.” 

Peter chuckled at her cheek. 

“All right, so come on, what does this really mean for our place?” he asked.

“Well,” Ellen began as she opened both eyes and sat up straighter, serious once more. “It means the factory will close. It might still be used by the Taskforce because there will be inner-city and regional operations going on under the one umbrella, but it won’t be used by us. I get to recommend people, but I have to do that this weekend because they want to start going through all personnel files and bringing people in for interviews and making offers very quickly. They could make an offer to someone in our team that I don’t recommend, so my word isn’t final. That being said, I know who I would want on that Taskforce. I don’t know how you’re going to feel about it-”

“Angie? Danni?” Peter guessed.

“Danni,” Ellen said with wise eyes and a wary grimace. “What do you think?”

“I think they’d be lucky to have her,” Peter said. “You hired her, just like you hired Angie and Oscar back when you were Bernie’s second. You know potential. But what about you, Mac? Did Masters tell you anything about where you might end up? Does he want you on the Taskforce? Can you recommend yourself?”

“One of my offers,” Ellen said as her eyes filled with tears. “Is from Homicide.”

“What?” Peter asked. His mouth fell open as he stared at her. She nodded, and a tear slipped out of one eye onto her cheek. 

“Yeah, but I don’t know if I want to take it,” she said. She took a deep breath and turned her face away from him, to lean it into his hand against the back of the couch. 

“Why not?” Peter asked. 

“Well, it’s for night shift team supervisor, to begin with,” Ellen said. She looked at him and pushed deeper into the back of the couch, with both her hands clutching her mug. Peter returned his mug to the coffee table so that he wasn’t distracted. He wanted to hear this. “I don’t know if I want to work night shifts,” Ellen continued. “I don’t think I want to always be looking at photographs and videos of corpses, and I don’t want to end up knee-deep and absorbed in the sort of depressing, domestic abuse bullshit issues that a lot of homicides involve. Do you think that’s selfish?”

“No,” Peter said as he shook his head thoughtfully. “You’ve turned down, what, two other offers from Homicide in the past ten years? Obviously there’s always been something about it that makes you hesitate, and that’s okay. I definitely get the night shift thing. We have late nights on the job, but it’s not every night. No morgue visits. What about a job on this Taskforce?” he asked. “Our unit has one of the highest conviction rates in the force, has done for years. You’ve been involved in that, you can show everyone coming from Drug Squad into the new squad how it’s done.”

“So far all I can come up with is a list of divisions and branches I don’t want to work in,” Ellen said, skirting around an answer. “I’ll see what’s left at the end of the day, I guess. How about you? I know I’ve just dumped this information on you Peter, I’m sorry…we’re all up for transfer, effectively. If you tell me where you want to go, I will do everything in my power and use every favour I have to make it happen.”

“What if I want to just stay here with you?” he asked as he gave her knee a rub. Ellen laughed and rolled her eyes. It made him feel only slightly better. He knew the others were going to be devastated too. “I honestly need to think about it,” Peter said. “But I will, I promise. The Taskforce sounds interesting, but I’m forty-six, and if I’m interpreting this correctly, it means that some key operatives – let’s say the best ones they poach from all of our units on your lot’s recommendations – would be positioned around the state in the city or in country towns, deep undercover, for years on end?”

“Some long assignments, yes,” Ellen said. “That’s why they’re going to vet people.”

“Mate, Ellen…I don’t want that,” Peter said, his heart thudding and as his stomach churning at the thought. “I don’t want to lose this. I’ve just got a hold of you again.”

“I know,” Ellen said as her voice again cracked. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”

“Don’t be, it’s not your fault.” He shuffled closer to her on the couch, until her knees butted up against his thigh and hip. It meant that his outstretched arm was close enough to wrap around the back of her head and comb through her thick brown hair. “And I don’t want you,” he said. “To take on a job that’s going to be really stressful.”

“Pete, right now every job I can think of feels like it will be too much,” she whispered. “I am overwhelmed. I have to tell my friends they’re losing their jobs, and we’re losing our home.”

“I know,” he said gently. “It’s okay, it’ll be okay.” He pulled her into a hug and she held her mug safely in her lap while her other arm wrapped around his waist. Peter shut his eyes as he held her. This was definitely going to put a damper on their surprise party for her birthday and her ten-year anniversary in the unit. “Oh hey,” he said when an idea struck him. “You said there was good news. What was it?”

“Oh,” Ellen said on a sad chuckle as she sniffled and they shuffled around in their hug to get more comfortable. She shut her eyes and inhaled the smell of his fresh shirt. They actually hadn’t hugged in years, but he was strong and warm, and he felt familiar, like they’d always been this close. He smelt the same. She was sure he had showered before coming over too, and the thought filled her up and made her smile. “I was going to say that the good news is I think we should diversify,” she said.

“Hmm?” Peter hummed curiously as he leant his cheek against the top of her head. 

“I was going to ask you to dinner. The weekly breakfast is still a given, but do you want to have dinner with me one night? Eve, my uh, my biological mum, she’s having an art exhibition next weekend and I thought we could have dinner and then see it.”

“It’s a deal,” Peter said. “Can I meet her finally?” 

“Ahuh,” Ellen said with a pleased grin. “My half sister too, if you like. She’s twenty-three. She likes me.” She lifted her head and looked at Peter more seriously. “It’s taken three and a half years for me to get this stage with them, and that’s with my regular job getting in the way. I don’t want to end up in a new job that makes it even harder. My brother is still in jail for rape, my parents are interstate, still not okay with my apparently wasted intelligence. I’ll take whatever I can get from the two relatives in this world who want to know me…and I want to properly date the one other person I’ve always trusted-” She touched his face and the golden-grey stubble on his jaw as he watched her with a serious grimace and watery eyes. “To answer your question, Reg Masters did offer me a spot on the Taskforce,” she said. “I turned him down.”


	4. Chapter 4

FOUR

“Danni,” Ellen said when she got out of her car inside the factory later that morning, only to see Danni at her desk. “It’s ten-thirty, I gave you all a midday start.”

“I know, but I wanted to get the reports from last night started so you and Angie can just add your statements and away we go. I also want to go over the witness testimony; it occurred to me that some of the victims might have said something about smelling cigarette smoke, or not, and either way that could be relevant. Do you think those two will be back tonight?”

“One of them liked the look of Angie, so maybe, but neither of them are a very good match to our victims’ descriptions,” Ellen said with a shrug as she walked towards the steps that led to her office on the factory landing. “Can I see you when you’re ready, Danni?” she asked over her shoulder. “There’s a job I want to talk to you about.”

“Sure. I’ll just grab a coffee and give you five to settle in,” Danni said. “Want one?”

“No it’s okay,” Ellen replied as she smiled. Peter had made her a very strong coffee that morning after spending the night beside her, and he had then sat and had breakfast with her at her kitchen bench, watching her eat double her usual helping of toast and drink nearly a litre of warm water. She had woken up dehydrated, starving and still anxious, because she had been too busy and stressed the previous day to eat. Peter knew it too, dammit. By the time she got downstairs, the coffee was ready. Ellen hated that she only ever seemed to invite Peter to her house so that she could fall apart on him. It had to be the third time in a decade and it just wasn’t good enough.

Danni knocked on her open office door and smiled her broad, toothy smile. She was holding onto her mug of coffee, and when Ellen waved her in she sat on the seat opposite the boss’ desk and rested the warm mug in her lap. Ellen surprised her by closing the office door, even though there was no one else there yet. Non-operational staff didn’t work on weekends unless there was a big job about to go down, and to Peter, Oscar and Angie, midday meant midday. They were already alone.

“Ooh, that’s ominous,” Danni said, teasing and chuckling as Ellen returned to her desk and sat down. Her raised dark eyebrow quickly wiped the smile from Danni’s face. “Uh-oh,” she added under her breath. She held her mug tightly. “What is it?”

“In the next few weeks State Crime Command will be putting together a Special Drug Taskforce that will be an amalgamation of some Drug Squad and Covert Services operations, and they’ve asked me to recommend one or two of my best operatives for a spot on the unified team. If it’s all right with you, I would like to recommend you for that Taskforce, and also for your Detectives Course.”

Danni stared at her with an open mouth and wide, green eyes. She reached back with a hand to scratch around her ponytail of dark blonde hair, simply for something to do until she could make words come out of her mouth.

“Really?” was all she managed a minute later. 

“Yes,” Ellen said with a smile. “It’s not a guaranteed spot on the Taskforce, but no matter what happens in that regard you can still do your Detectives Course. I’ll support you on that. I know it’s something you’ve thought about, thanks to your last few performance reviews, and I remember when I first interviewed you six years ago you said you wanted to make Detective for Homicide one day.”

“Well yeah, but I really just wanted an excuse to wear plain clothes,” Danni said. Ellen raised her eyebrows in a silent challenge until Danni sighed. “Okay, I’ll be serious. I would love that Mac, but uh, I haven’t felt hemmed in here at all, you should know that. I love what we do, and rank has never seemed too important.”

“It’s not important here in these four walls,” Ellen said. “It’s important out there.”

“Got it,” Danni said warily. “You’d write me a reference? What’s the Taskforce actually for? What would I be doing?”

“Its aim will primarily be to track the supply of Ice and methamphetamines around the state, particularly to block the supply chains leading into regional country towns. They want undercover operatives stationed around the state – long-term assignments – and they of course need people for more investigative work and to manage the logistics from an operational viewpoint. I…would caution you about any long-term undercover work. You can talk to Peter about it, he’s done it-”

“You mean full-time, for months?” Danni asked.

“Possibly years,” Ellen said with a narrowed, serious gaze. “The longest that Peter has been undercover was on a drugs job and it was eleven months full time. It was before I even started working here, but I’ve read the file and I know what he’s told me over the years. The most recent time he went in on a long-term assignment, it was only a matter of months, but he ended up engaged to the target’s sister, decided to quit the police to be with her, and when her brother found out, he killed her.”

“Christina Rossi,” Danni said under her breath. “Oscar told me about her years ago when I was still new and I was asking about Pete. Stone said that she was the second fiancée that was shot and killed? Peter’s never talked to me about them.”

“He doesn’t like to talk about Alice and Christina,” Ellen said. “But he will talk to you about the job, if you ask him. I’ve made sure of it.”

“Thanks Mac, I appreciate that,” Danni said softly. “So…I would have a choice?”

“If you’re in your Detectives Course, they won’t put you on a long-term assignment,” Ellen explained. “You’ll be working with operations, shadowing actual Detectives on the Taskforce until you’re qualified. That’s what I would like to recommend for you. You’re a good operative, Danni, an effective Senior Constable, but given a few years you could be a very successful Detective Sergeant, maybe even a Senior Sergeant.”

“In a suit, like you?” Danni asked with a disbelieving laugh. Ellen raised an eyebrow. 

“Is that something you might want?” Ellen asked simply. She was wearing a suit, a grey suit with a pale blue blouse, and she could see Danni’s eyes roaming in thought.

“Yes,” Danni said on a stunned whisper. “But Mac-”

“I know you’re about to say it means leaving,” Ellen said as she held up a hand. “But you’ve been here for five years now, and if you really do still want to end up in a Homicide team or in Major Crime Command, this is your chance.”

“You said you could recommend one or two people to the Taskforce?” Danni said. “Are you…going to recommend anyone else? Peter? Angie? Oscar?”

“Just you,” Ellen said. 

“I don’t know if I’m experienced enough Mac,” Danni said. “I joined the police late, I’m thirty-six just like you, older than Oscar and Angie, but they went to the academy when they were eighteen. Compared to them and to you and Church, I’m still new.”

“I’m not giving you a reference because I think you’re an expert,” Ellen said. “You’re enthusiastic and you’ve got potential, more potential for this kind of investigative work than the others. Maybe I haven’t made that clear to you over the years, and I’m sorry if that’s true. I don’t want you to get stuck here, or in a team where you don’t have as many opportunities to move up. I’ve had you marked as a future Detective since the day you walked into headquarters and I interviewed you. It doesn’t bother me if you decide it’s not for you anymore, but if it is, let me help you get there, now.”

“Okay,” Danni said with an eager nod as she looked at Ellen’s steeled, determined but earnest expression. “Now is good. I’ll apply to do the Detective Course and you can make that recommendation to the Taskforce. Just um, let me know what they say?”

“I’ll get the paperwork together,” Ellen said with a sudden smile as she sat back in her chair. “You might be called in for an interview next week.”

“Should I keep this between us?” Danni asked. 

“If you can, I would appreciate it,” Ellen said as her smile faded slightly. “It won’t be for long, maybe just a few days. But Peter knows, if you wanted a second opinion.”

Danni left the office wondering what on earth had just actually happened. Had she agreed on a transfer out of the unit? So that she could become a Detective, maybe in a special taskforce? It was what she had always wanted, and of course she had written it down in her list of career goals when she filled out those bloody performance review forms, but they had never discussed the Detective Course; it wasn’t a qualification that Danni needed in Covert Services. She had been excited enough to be accepted into the elite undercover unit as a Constable, plucked from a station in the suburbs after just two years in uniform. Plucked by Ellen Mackenzie, it was fair to say. 

Danni pressed her lips together in a barely suppressed grin as she jogged down the stairs still holding her coffee mug. So what if this offer was coming without warning on a Saturday morning, she reasoned. It didn’t matter that it was a surprise. This was an opportunity she could not pass up; it could change her life. 

Danni hurried to her desk and sat down to keep working, and once she could hide behind her computer monitor she grinned broadly to get it out of her system. She would need to hide her nervous excitement as soon as the others arrived. Danni hoped they wouldn’t be jealous, or angry with Ellen for her choosing her over them. A part of Danni didn’t really want to leave them, but maybe Ellen was right and it was time. 

*

“So mum had this idea,” Oscar announced from his desk, as across the way he watched Angie typing up her part of the previous night’s report that Danni had drafted. Angie hummed instead of asking him what it was, only half-listening. “Now that Mac has given me the time off, she and dad are going to drive here and then to Adelaide and then north-”

“That’s a long trip,” Angie said as she hit backspace several times and corrected a spelling error. “When’s the last time they did such a long drive?”

“Oh, years, but mum says dad will let her drive and that’s about as safe as it’s going to get,” Oscar said on a laugh. “However, mum wants to come to stay at my place for a few days, because she wants to buy a wedding present for Brad and Victoria, and she wants to buy something new to wear to the wedding, and something new for dad to wear, and apparently she wants to see me too…Angie, I was won-der-ing-”

“No,” Angie said as she glanced at him with a pertinent expression on her tan face. “I’m not pretending to be your girlfriend.”

“You don’t have to, they know you’re not,” Oscar said on a laugh. “They’ve known for years that the Michelle thing was just a bit of fun-”

“A bit of fun? Your parents thought we were living together!”

“Anyway,” Oscar said wistfully, still laughing. “Mum’s pretty nervous about meeting this girl, and the wedding, and having to hob-nob with generations of the classy beef-breedin’ folk…it would be really good for her if she got some Ange time.”

“What is Ange time?” Angie asked with a bemused smirk on her face. She sat back in her chair, swiveled towards him and crossed her arms. “Definition please.”

“Taking mum into the city for a shopping day?” Oscar asked hopefully. He raised his voice into a chirpy whisper and added, “Please-please-please-please-please?” 

Angie rolled her eyes and snorted, doing her best not to laugh at the way his forehead crinkled while he pouted and forced his eyes to go wide and pleading. 

“For a wedding outfit?” she asked. 

“Yes, and a vase or something stupid like that for the bride and groom. I know she would love to see you again, and it will relax her to hang out with a, well, a younger woman…hopefully it will reassure her that it’s very unlikely Victoria is crazy or abusive or a bitch.”

“Okay,” Angie said. She cocked her head to the side and smiled. “A shopping day.”

“Ah, thank you! Thank you, thank you!” Oscar declared loudly as he stood up and hurried around his desk to close the distance between them. He leant over and hugged her and Angie sighed and loosely patted his waist over his khaki t-shirt. “And,” he said as he pulled back and looked at her. He held his palms together as though in prayer in front of his chest. “Dinner at my place one night? I’ll do all the cooking. It would just be really nice for them to both see you again and to know that I don’t live like a loner hermit when I’m not at work-”

“But you do,” Angie said in a wide-eyed whisper. Oscar grinned at her and nodded. “Ohh,” Angie drawled on a sigh. She felt her resolve fading. She did like Oscar’s parents, and her own parents were both still in the United States and weren’t coming back to Australia until at least Christmas. “I suppose,” she said. “If I get a lovely hug from Shirley and we get to go shopping then it’ll be worth it.”

“Yes!” Oscar said as he wrapped his arms around her again. “I don’t even have to tell her to hug you either. She just will.”

“Like you just are?” Angie asked as she gestured between them. “Genetic, is it?”

“Must be,” he said as he chuckled and finally let her go. He grasped her upper arms and gave her a squeeze. “Thanks Ange, and I promise no Michelle jokes…at least from me and mum, dad’s still snippy about it when he doesn’t see it as hilarious.”

“Angie, Oscar,” Ellen said from her position leaning over the landing railing and staring down at them. Angie and Oscar both looked up and Ellen gestured for Angie to join her. “Can I see you?”

“Sure Mac,” Angie said, before turning to Oscar and mock-glaring at him. “Busted.”

“For what?” Oscar asked as he followed Angie up the stairs and into Ellen’s office, where she was waiting to close the door behind them. “What can we do for you boss?” he asked happily as Angie took a seat. Oscar waited until Ellen had sat down at her desk before he pulled up a second chair to sit beside Angie. 

“Are you actually getting any work done today?” Ellen asked him seriously.

“Yeah, getting the paperwork up to date before I go on leave,” Oscar assured her. “I’m about halfway, and in a few hours I’ll do an equipment check for tonight, same as always.”

“How long are you going on leave for again?” Ellen asked as she opened her diary and started flicking through it. “Three weeks from next…”

“Well it was going to be Tuesday but mum and dad are now coming here for a couple of days on Tuesday, and so I’ll head up to the farm in a week. Next Friday?”

“Okay,” Ellen said as she made a note. “I’ll need you to do something for me before then if you can.” She looked at Oscar seriously as he nodded. “Can you please do up a report on all of the jobs you’ve got in the pipeline, anything you’re working on with your informants. We need to know what the informants have said, where the job is at, who’s involved, etcetera. Just a detailed list or summary of each will be fine. I’ll also need a list of all of your informants, with the best contact info you’ve got.”

“All of them?” Oscar asked. “Uh…why?”

“To make sure our unit’s records are up to date,” Ellen said. “For auditing.”

“Oh, that time of year again, is it?” Oscar asked with a knowing chuckle. “No worries.”

“Do you want me to do the same?” Angie asked. 

“Yes please Angie,” Ellen said as she nodded. “And I know that on Monday afternoon you’re due to buy some more heroin from Justin…I’m going to need you to tell him that Ava can’t afford it right now, and put him off for a few weeks.”

“I’ve been getting this bloke’s trust for months. He could bail with his supplier.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Ellen said. 

“End of financial year budget problems, Mac?” Oscar asked. 

“Something like that,” Ellen said with a wise but apologetic smile. “Just start getting your paperwork for everything, not just this Sex Crimes job, up to date. And on Monday morning I’d like you both in here at eight a.m. sharp for a staff meeting.”

“When do you need my lists by?” Angie asked. 

“Sometime in the next week, same as Oscar.” 

Angie and Oscar both nodded and agreed to Ellen’s terms, before leaving her office and shutting the door behind them as requested. 

“Reckon they’ve frozen our funds until new financial year?” Oscar asked in Angie’s ear as they trudged down the concrete steps and across the floor to their desks. 

“Yep,” Angie said under her breath. “Mac told Danni and Pete yesterday to shelve the huge job they were building up to with that Lachlan Fraser guy. My work with Justin would have paid off big time in a few months as well. It means the only job we’re currently on is a surveillance job for Sex Crimes, which doesn’t require us to hand over any money to informants or targets. That’s not a coincidence.”

“Guess we’ll find out for sure on Monday morning,” Oscar said. “Eight a.m…sharp.”


	5. Chapter 5

FIVE

“At least it’s not raining this afternoon,” Danni said as she sat in the surveillance van down the street from the park. “Ange and Mac looked freezing by the time they got back to the factory. I heard teeth chattering.”

“It was pretty wet out there,” Peter agreed as he again switched on all the monitors to check the cameras were active. Angie was in her car ready for their signal, and outside the communications van the sun was setting behind low, grey clouds that had brought sporadic light showers for the past several hours. 

“There are a lot more people in the park today,” Danni announced as she watched the eight video screens. “It’s the weekend, it’s not currently raining…a lot more people.”

“Not on this track though,” Peter said as he gestured towards the few camera angles that covered the more bushland running track in the southeast corner that was the focus of their investigation. 

“That’s because everyone knows this is where the attacks happened,” Danni said. “People are staying away, taking extra precautions. Look at this-” She pointed to the screens that covered the more open park areas of the track. “Look at the families playing on the oval…there’s a mum and dad, and a dad, and another dad. There’s a group of adults playing soccer, a few guys with a Frisbee…and the only single women I can see are the women walking their large dogs.”

“Point taken,” Peter said. “We’re about to send in two single women to even things out.”

“Whoever’s doing this is so brazen,” Danni said. “To have actually snatched two of the women off the path on a Saturday evening like this…and to keep coming back to the same spot, over and over.”

“It’s a good spot,” Peter said. “When Oscar and I were setting the cameras I had a walk around while he sat in here checking angles. The local council has never put cameras in their big parks like this before, so they were no help. They have agreed to clear the scrub out properly, but Sex Crimes weren’t letting them do that until they were sure they had collected all the ground evidence, and then we moved in. Anyway, even with our set-up now, there are actually still two blind spots I found, where if I stood a certain distance off the shoulder of the bend, no camera could see me.”

“Plus it’s close to an easy escape route,” Danni said. “A quick jog down the path and you’re on the street, a block from trams and trains. Where are the blind spots?”

“Here,” Peter said as he pointed between screens three and four. “And here,” he added, pointing to between screens six and seven. “Your average runner isn’t going to move that far off the path.”

“A dog walker might, for a poop-scoop stop,” Danni said. “But no one with a dog has been attacked…The only reason your average runner would move into that dead space would be if they were forced there, like if something got in their way…like two guys blocking the path having a smoke, perhaps?”

“Maybe,” Peter said. 

“Are the council going to keep these cameras running permanently once we’re gone?”

“No idea, Danni. Mac wants them to, but I think what they’ll do is install one or two permanent cameras at either end, more as a deterrent. You’re right though; this guy just keeps coming back for more. Hopefully we can coax him out of hiding.”

“It’s been a week since the last attack,” Danni said. “He’d be desperate for number six.”

“Well Sex Crimes and local police have a visible presence here during the day and in the early hours, and here we are making sure it doesn’t happen at nightfall. Mac spoke to you today?”

“Yeah, she did,” Danni said on a relieved sigh. She had been waiting to get Peter on his own and then for a good time to talk. “She said you knew what she was going to offer me. The Detectives Course and uh, a recommendation to this new Taskforce?”

“What do you think?”

“I told her yes, of course,” Danni said. “But she said it’s not a guarantee and leaving all of you is still going to be really tough. It should be good for my career though.”

“Definitely,” Peter said. “I’m sure Mac will help you out wherever she can as well.”

“She really surprised me,” Danni said softly as she blushed and stared at her hands. “Angie and Oscar work so hard, they’ve got far better informants than me, and about three years more experience in undercover. I am…surprised that they aren’t being recommended. When I first got here I used to see Angie and Mac as best friends, and I know this is a professional decision and Mac’s drifted away from us all in the last two or three years so her friendship with Angie wouldn’t even come into it…but I’m worried that Angie is going to take it personally. Oscar as well. I don’t understand.”

“Wanna know my theory?” Peter asked. Danni nodded eagerly and he smiled at her. “The Taskforce are going to go through personnel files independent of any referrals and they’re going to make their own offers. My theory is that Mac is betting on Angie being offered a place. I also know that despite your bubbly, cheeky nature, Mac’s always seen a little bit of herself in you, and she doesn’t want you to be overlooked, because heaven forbid two policewomen from the same undercover unit be selected!”

“But no Detectives Course for Angie?”

“No, that’s all you,” Peter said, grinning. He winked at her happily. “You’ll be right.”

“Okay,” Danni said softly, before she added, “Ahh, Church, I’m freaking out!”

Peter laughed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving her a squeeze. 

“I’m very happy for you Senior Constable Mayo,” he said. “You’re gonna be a terrific D, no matter where you end up.”

“Well…Homicide was always the goal.”

“That’s what Mac used to think too,” Peter said. “I promise, if you want it, you’ll get there. Now, let’s get Angie moving before she self-combusts from a need to run.” He held the switch to activate Angie’s communications device in her headphones. “You’re good to go Ange. No sign of the two men from last night.”

“Copy that,” she said quickly. “Entering the trail now.”

Danni sighed as she watched Angie’s fit figure appear on-screen. She was still sure that Angie was going to be upset when she found out about Ellen’s recommendation, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. 

“Oh, twenty bucks!” Angie exclaimed between breaths as she ran along the path. She was at the bend but she didn’t stop or slow down. “Twenty dollar note just lying in the path,” she mumbled once she quickly cleared the area. “Ran right over it.”

“Any of the previous victims mention picking up money?” Peter asked Danni. She shook her head silently.

“The only victim whose memory seems unaffected by any head injury or the trauma says she was grabbed by her ponytail. That’s the first victim…he didn’t do as much damage to that first one, but the sexual assault was more serious. The rest all took a heavier beating and lost consciousness. They all remember being knocked off balance from behind, two say they think they were tricked into walking off the path, and three remember the sound of footsteps accelerating behind them, but it’s all very vague and hazy. The sexual assaults haven’t been escalating, the beatings have. He’s angry.”

“And skilled in delivering consistent concussions,” Peter said on a sigh. He held the switch to respond to Angie.

“Copy that Ange. Look for it each time you run the loop, take note, but leave it for now. When you’re finished, hang back on the oval and stretch. Eyes and ears open.”

“They always are,” Angie replied quickly. 

“You want Mac to pick it up the money?” Danni asked, and Peter nodded. 

“If no one else does first,” he pointed out. “Relax. We can be in there in minutes.”

*

Ellen knew the money would still be there, because Peter and Danni hadn’t seen anyone move onto the path since Angie had done her last loop. She picked it out on the ground in front of her from beneath the shield of her now-dry baseball cap but deliberately ran over the top of it. A few steps later, she slowed, then stopped, as though she had just realised what she had seen. She took a minute to catch her breath and turned quickly on her heels. As she approached the money she used her cap as a shield that allowed her to also scan the bush either side of the path. She heard and saw nothing, and she crouched down to pick it up. For a brief second she thought it might be glued to the ground, but soon she held a red, crinkled, muddy twenty-dollar note in her hands. She chuckled when she thought she could see Angie’s shoeprint still on it.

But Ellen knew that she was facing the wrong way, she was crouched towards wherever someone might be hiding if they wanted to attack her from behind, and they could be put off from coming at her from in front, so as she stood she turned back around, displaying a tempting ponytail and a definite lack of speed. 

“Excellent,” she said. She stood to the side of the path to make sure any other runners or cyclists could easily pass her, and she took a minute to clean the note off on her tracksuit pants, before pocketing it. “Best day ever,” she said to herself happily, before continuing on. 

When she got further into the park and could look out over the open space of the ovals, she saw Angie using the public exercise equipment that was now scattered around parks across the city. She was on the chunky green cross-trainer, facing the direction of the running track, and she was close enough for Ellen to jog a few extra steps towards her and call out. 

“I just found twenty dollars on that path. Not bad for a Saturday night!”

“Oh really?” Angie asked, acting put out as she stood up properly on the trainer and leant over the bars. “I must have missed it. This evening light makes it hard to see stuff on the ground. Lucky you. Are you new? I haven’t seen you here before.”

“Yeah,” Ellen said. “New routine. I’m trying to get pregnant and the doctor says running might help. I don’t know why.”

“Exercise is good for you,” Angie said with a disbelieving laugh, but she wasn’t too surprised by the conversation. Ellen was the queen of improvisation, a genuine actor. Angie was sure that inside Ellen’s head she had created a whole character for herself, with a full backstory, when really her only job was to run around in a circle and try not to look like a cop. “Oh well, good luck,” Angie said. “But be careful on that path. Cops have been here, asking questions. It’s where those women were attacked.”

“Oh really?” Ellen asked. “Thanks, it’s such a good path though! I’m Leanne, by the way.”

“I’m Alison,” Angie said off the top of her head. They waved as Ellen continued back towards the track, and Angie chuckled once she was out of earshot. “Did you hear that?” she said into the mouthpiece on her headphones.

“We sure did Alison,” Danni said in reply. “But no action on the bend. We’ll give you a heads up once Mac’s back down and out, and you can run or walk back down. Pretend you’re looking for another twenty.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Angie said under her breath as she scoffed. She could hear Danni laughing but she didn’t mind at all that Ellen got to pocket the cash. She just hoped that someone had genuinely accidentally dropped it there that afternoon, and that it hadn’t been some kind of test, because Ellen always passed every test.

*

“I know I said we should diversify,” Ellen said the next day as she and Peter sat at a table at a waterfront restaurant. “But why lunch?”

“It’s Sunday. And I thought it was the most effective way to keep you out of the office for the day,” Peter answered as he looked out past the glass fencing and the esplanade, towards the ocean and the hundreds of boats bobbing in the marina nearby. 

Ellen smiled at him as she watched his mind wander. He was wearing his best dark jeans and a blue, black and white checkered shirt beneath his jacket, and he seemed a lot more relaxed than she felt. 

“Does the reason you want me out of the office have anything to do with the fact that it’s my birthday this week?” she asked. His eyes slid slowly towards her as she grinned. “Or the fact that on Wednesday night, it says in my diary that I’m helping you to study for the Sergeant’s exam from four p.m. onwards, even though I discovered yesterday that the exam isn’t until the following week?”

“You looked up the dates?”

“I was looking up the Detectives Course dates for Danni,” Ellen said. “Sue me for being thorough, but I checked on yours as well. Woops.”

“Okay, okay,” he said on a playful groan as he sat up straighter and chuckled. “Danni and Angie are smuggling a bunch of decorations and thirty-seven candles into the factory today and I volunteered for ‘distract the boss’. Little do they know-”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to feel like celebrating my birthday come Wednesday.”

“Too bad, that’s what we’re gonna do,” Peter said seriously. Ellen sighed but there was a soft smile lingering in her eyes that had been there since he picked her up. He let his eyes settle on the dark green scarf slung around her neck and her long-sleeved, light pink top that looked so very soft as it hung from her shoulders and draped across her chest. “But on the bright side,” he said as he lifted his eyes to meet hers. “We get to have lunch, and I think this should definitely count as our first official date.”

“That’s a big call,” Ellen said wisely as she pushed a few strands of dark hair behind her shoulders. The top half of her hair was tied back, but there was a light, cool breeze ruffling both their heads and whipping hair around her scarf towards her face. “In ten years and even in that one year of motel-hopping we never went on an official date.”

“It’s time,” Peter said. She had said it herself and she grinned at him and nodded.

“I agree.” She took a deep breath and laid her arm out across the table, nearest to the glass fencing. Her palm was turned upwards and in response Peter smiled and quickly, easily took her hand, on top of the table, where anyone could see. Ellen didn’t think that had ever happened before. She had never let it happen. She felt herself shaking and laughed to cover it up. 

“Nervous?” Peter asked her with a challenging grin.

“You’re already my most successful relationship,” she said. “And I’m not talking about the year we were intimate; that was just a bonus at the wrong time. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Pete. I’ve never had any relationship last this long.”

“Me either,” Peter said, his clear blue eyes full of understanding. His voice shook as he added, “This won’t wreck it Mac, I promise.”

“I know that,” she said softly as she smiled. “I’m not actually worried about that, and I’m not worried about being seen.” She gave his hand a squeeze and sat back in her chair as Peter smiled back at her. “I just know,” she said. “That I’ve missed holding your hand. Since we started again, it feels like we never stopped.”

Peter chuckled, cocked his head to the side and said, “Do you think everything will feel that way?”

Ellen rolled her eyes as she let go of his hand, glared at him playfully, and stuck her tongue out. He handed her a menu. 

“I try to be sentimental,” she said under her breath as she held the menu up between them, teasing him with her despondent voice. “I try to be romantic, God knows I’m not naturally very good at it, but noooo-”

“Oi,” Peter said as he kicked her gently beneath the table. She peered over the top of her menu with a raised brow and her lips pursed. He leant forwards and looked straight into her eyes. “Maybe I’m the one that’s nervous, about all that…it’s been years, frankly.”

“Same,” Ellen said as she took a deep breath and put her menu down on the table. “Years.” She hadn’t even kissed a man since Bill was killed, and she was fairly sure that Danni had been Peter’s last lover, almost just as long ago. The job just wasn’t suited to finding or keeping partners from outside the job, undercover units were notorious for breaking up marriages, and the older they got the harder it was to meet anyone who they felt could fully integrate and be accepted into very private lives. 

“So we’ll muddle through together?” Peter asked. He bit his bottom lip and Ellen smiled widely and nodded, eager to reassure him it was what she wanted. She reached for his hand again and when he reciprocated he held her long fingers and brushed his thumb across her knuckles. “I did miss these hands,” he admitted. Something about them caught his eye and he held their joined hands up for a closer look. “The black nail polish is back!” he announced. “Do you feel better about work fucking us now?”

“I do, actually,” Ellen said with a laugh. “Black nail polish is excellent therapy.”


	6. Chapter 6

SIX

“Whoa,” Oscar said when he looked around the factory on Monday. It was quarter to eight and all of their non-operational staff had turned up for the staff meeting. “So when Mac said a staff meeting…” He looked at Angie, who had arrived before him and who he had found sitting on the pool table beside Danni. “She really meant a staff meeting.” The car park area was still only filled with their cars, and everyone else had come in on foot through the secure doorway entrance, as they did normally, but never all of them at once. 

“This is not good,” Angie simply said. Her arms were folded over her chest and she and Danni were both looking up towards the landing, where Ellen’s office door remained firmly shut. 

“Where’s Church?” Oscar asked. Danni pointed to Ellen’s office. “We’re not all going to fit in the meeting room.”

“I think it’ll happen out here,” she said. “Have you heard what they’re saying?”

“I just parked my car two minutes ago,” Oscar said with a smirk, but he leant closer anyway, intensely interested in any and all rumours about why they were there. “What are they saying?”

“Our firearm guys brought their lock-boxes,” Danni said. “They’re taking weapons.”

“Not our handguns,” Oscar said with a frown.

“No, no, just the extras,” Angie said in a hiss. “Our tech girl Jillian says other tech staff in other units have been told they’re being shut down. They were told over the weekend. Everyone here reckons they’re about to get sacked.”

“No way,” Oscar said as his frown deepened. Danni was swinging her legs nearby as she sat on the table’s edge and he put a hand to her thigh to stop her fidgeting and for balance. “That’s impossible. Mac would have told us first,” he insisted.

“I don’t know,” Danni said in a slow drawl. The sudden offer two days earlier to catapult her into the Detective Course was beginning to make sense, but she couldn’t tell them that yet, so she mentioned the only other evidence she had. “We’ve stopped all our active cases except one, because it’s arguably urgent. The others are kaput.”

“We can’t be sacked though,” Oscar said. “We’d be transferred.”

Angie glared at him and huffed, “That doesn’t make it better!”

“Maybe there’s just been a security breach and we’re moving,” Danni guessed noncommittally. She shrugged. “Let’s just wait for Mac to tell us.”

“This is so bad, guys,” Angie whispered as her eyes filled with tears. Danni wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her in for a hug as Oscar crossed his arms and looked around the factory floor. People were sitting at their desks and on their desks and they were talking in moments. There would be a burst of chatter and then someone would think they saw movement in Ellen’s office and everyone would suddenly stop talking, but then when nothing happened they started up again. The air was stuffy and Oscar was nervous, and also glad that all their non-operational staff was avoiding them. They all got on, but there was still an ‘us and them’ mentality that at times like this kicked into high gear. Oscar was sure all the tech crew and the admin staff and the firearms guys assumed that the three loner operatives at the pool table knew something that they didn’t, especially if they knew that Peter was also inside Ellen’s office with her.

Oscar had to agree with Angie at that point. It did not look good. 

Finally the door to Ellen’s office opened and Peter walked out. 

“He’s not smiling,” Angie said under her breath. They all watched him carefully. He said hello and briefly smiled at a dozen people as he walked down a few steps, but he didn’t finish. He stopped halfway on the steps and just leant against the wall. 

“She’s going to talk from there,” Danni said. “He’s going to stand next to her.”

“Why?” Oscar asked. 

“In case she can’t do it,” Angie said in a knowing whisper. 

Ellen emerged from her office a minute later holding a single piece of paper. She looked around the full factory floor and sought out her closest friends; they were at the back, on the pool table that was shoved between the wall and the nearest parking space. She hoped they were going to be able to hear her, but then again the noise of the previous half an hour had suddenly dropped away and all eyes were on her. 

She made her way halfway down the stairs to where Peter had marked her place, so that she wasn’t standing obviously above them, but also so the people in the back could see her properly. She leant against the railing and let the page of notes balance in her fingers. It was there for backup, just in case. 

“Good morning everyone,” she said, trying to meet as many of her staff’s eyes as possible before and as she spoke, without losing track of what she was saying. “Thank you for coming in so early on a Monday. I have an announcement to make and then I’ll take questions. Uh, in two hours time the Commissioner is going to hold a press conference to announce a restructure in the Victorian Police Force that is going to affect this unit and everyone here today. The restructure, I’ve been assured, will not result in the loss of any jobs. 

“The Commissioner is going to announce the creation of a Special Response to Drug Crimes Taskforce to be created inside the Serious Crime Division in the State Crime Command. This Taskforce will be comprised of a large contingent of Drug Squad officers, as well as a significant portion of operational and non-operational staff from Covert Services. Those people who are not going to be a part of the Taskforce will be transferred and retrained where necessary, to fill vacancies in our Command, in the State and Regional Intelligence and Surveillance Divisions. Transfers to other divisions including suburban and regional assignments will also be considered. 

“I’m not going to stand up here and say what they want me to say, which is that this is going to give the opportunity for everyone who has been working in undercover for a very long time to up-skill and pursue new challenges and new ways of policing blah-blah-blah. The bottom line is, this factory as it is now will be closing, probably within the month. I don’t know at this stage who will or will not be on the Taskforce, or what their requirements will be for admin and technical support. However, I’m going to do my best to answer your questions. Please bear with me, one at a time, and just know that this decision has been made at a much higher level in the past week, so I will be sketchy on the details. I’ll tell you what I can.” 

She stopped talking and waited, and sure enough one of her staff raised his hand. 

“What do you mean by retraining and up-skilling?”

“Computers mate,” Peter answered over Ellen’s shoulder, which got a laugh out of half the group as Ellen turned to glare at him. 

“He’s right,” she said reluctantly as she looked back to the group. “It’s not so much for the techies here today, but this is obviously going to close all undercover units as they currently exist around the city, and so undercover operatives who perhaps aren’t very up to date with things like cyber-intelligence, or new surveillance technology and the changing laws around obtaining information and how to go about that…will be re-trained. Obviously that’s so they can be effective members of divisions like State Intelligence and Surveillance Services.”

“So there aren’t going to be any undercover cops anymore? Is that just not going to be allowed?” another person asked.

“It is allowed. What this restructure is aiming to do, although whether it will succeed or not I don’t know, is to better integrate undercover operatives into the divisions that need them most. Namely Drug Squad and the new Taskforce, and I suspect also a few non-Taskforce operatives are going to want to be transferred to Organised Crime, Major Crime, and the Anti-Gangs Division. The aim is to make them more specialised and to give those divisions easier access to cops with covert capabilities.”

“When do the rest of us find out where we’re going?”

“Uh…I don’t know,” Ellen admitted as a rumble passed across the group. “It will definitely be before we close, but if you’re seconded to us, as the admin and tech staff are, then it’s your home division you’ll be returning to, and you may be redeployed from there. My plan for the rest of this month is to pack up for the off-site archives; this place has to be emptied out, operative’s IDs need to be protected in all files before they leave here. Most of our firearms will be removed today, as will the quantities of cash and drugs that we keep on premises. We’ve put a hold on all our operations except for the surveillance we’re running every evening this week and next; that’s a matter of some public urgency. You might have also heard rumours about funds being frozen, but I assure you, you will be paid…the only people who aren’t going to be getting paid are our operative’s informants. 

“I know this isn’t great news to start the week, but with the official announcement being made today it was important that you were told. I, uh, I don’t really know how to say how much I’ve appreciated working with you all here, many of you for several years. To the operatives and to so many of you who make our job that much easier, I’m very sorry that we won’t be leaving this place on our own terms. We still need your support for the next few weeks of course, but a lot of you will be returning to your home divisions for admin and tech roles in other areas of the force sooner rather than later, as our work here dwindles quickly. Um…any more questions?”

Ellen looked around the group and the only hand she saw go up was Oscar, right up the back. 

“Yeah Oscar?” she asked hopefully, even though she knew it was pointless. He looked about as hopeful as she felt. 

“Two questions,” he said, as everyone turned to look at him. 

They all knew him and wanted to hear what he had to say. He got so excited about the surveillance equipment and technology every time it was updated that the tech guys loved him, his easygoing attitude meant the admin staff appreciated him, and he was a good middle man between the quieter non-operational staff, and the sometimes more intimidating operational staff, like Peter, in a bad mood, at the end of a very bad day. 

“Firstly,” he said. “I’m about to take off on leave for a few weeks. Does that mean when I get back no one will be here? Or should I cancel my leave?”

“I’ll talk to you about it,” Ellen simply said. “Your second question?”

“Yeah. What are you going to do now…and can we please come with you?”

Ellen laughed as one of her staff whistled and a few clapped. Her face flushed. She got that they liked her and they weren’t blaming her, that part was actually fantastic because she felt sick standing in front of them, but it was still too much. She turned her head to look at Peter in an attempt to gauge how she should respond to Oscar, but he simply shrugged his shoulders and smiled reassuringly through closed lips. 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said honestly as she looked back to Oscar, and to Angie and Danni beside him. “I still don’t know, but I want to see the three of you up here in the meeting room when you’re ready. Please.”

Oscar, Angie and Danni all nodded as Angie slid off the pool table and walked down the back hallway towards the locker rooms and the bathrooms. Ellen sighed. 

“Okay,” she said. “That’s all I had to say. I’m declaring today a free day – with whatever pay you were meant to be entitled to if you were working – because we’ll have a few different teams coming in and out. So anyone who doesn’t need to be here you may leave, and anyone who is supposed to be here but who wants to take off to make phone calls – and those of you who are seconded here, your bosses are expecting them – or if you’d like to leave so you can beat the crap out of a punching bag at the gym, feel free. Just please come back when we need you, and I’ll be circulating a list of tasks I need completed by each group today or tomorrow to that effect. Please know this is equally difficult for everyone, pitch in, and let’s try to have a good few weeks getting this place tidied up for the new occupants. Thanks guys.”

Ellen offered them a brief smile before she turned back to Peter and touched his arm. She then jogged back up the stairs and walked into her office. She really needed to go to the toilet but Angie was still down that way, surely not in the greatest mood, and there were a lot of people in the direct path who would also surely ambush her, so Ellen decided to sit and wait until some of them left, or at least got their initial reactions out of their systems.

Outside, Peter made his way down the stairs. He was proud of Ellen for getting through that announcement with barely a crack in her voice, considering how badly she was struggling with it internally, and he was extremely grateful that the good people they worked with didn’t decide to get angry or attack her. He shook a few hands and had some brief conversations with the non-operational staff who knew him well enough to ask about his plans or how things were going, but Peter’s ultimate destination were his best mates up the back, Angie now having returned to them too.

“When did you find out?” she asked as soon as he stopped in front of them and offered a sad, guilty smile.

“Friday night,” he said. “Mac only got confirmation it was happening, and was only told the actual details, on Friday morning.” He met Danni’s wary eyes and added, “There were some decisions she had to prioritise from that point on, which meant she couldn’t tell us all until today, and I don’t think she got some of those details about people’s pay and job security until yesterday or early this morning, either.”

“So all the undercover units in the city, in the state, are going to be split up in some way?” Danni asked. “Some will go to Taskforce and will form new units or branches, and the rest will be split between other Crime Command and Covert Support Command divisions?”

“Yep,” Peter said easily. Ellen had been very clear on that. At least that part of the plan was easy to explain. “Operationally it’s gonna be a bugger.”

“What’s this Taskforce?” Angie asked. Peter explained it to her, knowing that Danni had already heard the same explanation from Ellen as well. 

“How do we get into it?” Oscar asked. “If we’re interested, I mean.”

“You can’t,” Peter said. “They’re cherry-picking from all the units. The bosses like Mac have some sway but nothing’s guaranteed. Operatives with the most experience and the best success rates on paper are going to be called in for interviews and it’s going to happen very quickly, or at least that’s what Mac reckons, maybe in the next two or three weeks. We should all know where we’re going by the end of the month.”

“This sucks,” Angie said softly. She bit her bottom lip and reached out to briefly clasp Peter’s forearm. “What about you? Are you hoping for the Taskforce? Why doesn’t Mac know yet where she’s going? You would think that our Chief Inspector would be making sure the best unit managers are looked after? I can’t believe you’ve known since Friday night, Peter! You didn’t say anything!”

“Mac asked me not to,” Peter said. “On Friday it was still brand new confidential information. She was upset, I promised she could trust me not to talk.”

“We’re not mad at you mate,” Oscar assured him on a sigh. “Just…stunned, really. We should get in there with Mac. Did she have any warning?”

“A bit,” Peter said. “There was talk, and there were issues with the last budget and where money was going to be moved from July that indicated something was going on behind the scenes, but like I said, no one had details until a few days ago. I’d heard all of the talk, but just because she’s been training me and letting me help out, it’s not like I could just turn around and tell you all about it.”

“No, we get that,” Oscar said as he nodded seriously, and Angie and Danni exchanged an uncertain glance. “Let’s go then. She said she wanted to see us.”

Danni slid off the pool table and they walked as a team of four back across the factory and up the stairs. A dozen other staff had already left and it seemed like they were all going to take Ellen up on her offer of a free day off. 

“Knock-knock,” Danni said as she got to Ellen’s open office door first. “We’re here.”

“Great,” Ellen said with a tired smile as she stood from her desk. “We’ll fit better next door in the meeting room. How’s it looking out there on the floor?”

“Decidedly less crowded. Everyone’s in shock and leaving in groups. Why?”

“Oh, I need the loo and I didn’t want to talk to anyone on the way there or in a queue. I wasn’t sure I could hold myself together straight after that talk, I wasn’t feeling well, so instead I sat here and took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves.”

Danni laughed loudly at the stuffy expression on Ellen’s face. 

“Right, get up, I’ll go with you then. Honestly, a Detective Senior Sergeant being escorted to the dunny. Now I’ve heard it all.”

“I just made a lot of people feel very uncertain about their future,” Ellen said with a definite tremor in her voice that hadn’t been there in public, as she stood and confronted Oscar, Angie and Peter all waiting on the landing behind Danni as well. 

“We’ll be back,” Danni said to them as she shepherded Ellen out ahead of her. “We’re going to the ladies’ to splash some cold water on our faces. Angie, you coming?”

“Why not,” Angie said as they followed Ellen back downstairs. She did look pale.


	7. Chapter 7

SEVEN

Danni returned to the meeting room ten minutes later and emptied her arms of a box of tissues, a large and heavy jug of water and five plastic cups. Peter and Oscar were patiently waiting side by side in their seats, working on the newspaper crossword together. 

“Ah, brotherly love,” Danni said in jest as Oscar chewed on the bottom of his pen and looked up at her. “Sorry we’re taking our time,” she said more softly when Peter also lifted his head and Danni was able to glance at him. “Mac’s crying a little,” she said. Peter’s face fell but he hid it quickly and turned his attention to the reading glasses he was halfway through cleaning. Danni wasn’t an idiot, she knew their history because Peter had confessed the whole thing to her during their own brief affair, and not that Ellen probably knew, but she was the main reason they had mutually decided to end it; Peter still loved her, and he’d admitted as much to Danni more than three years ago. Feelings like that, lying dormant for all those years, didn’t just go away. 

Danni hadn’t missed the way that Ellen had turned to look at him a couple of times during her announcement either, which was interesting. She had touched his arm on the way back to her office. They had been spending more time together at work too. Reestablishing a better friendship, Danni hoped, because Ellen had been distancing herself from them all progressively for years, ever since Bill Hollister got blown up and she found out about Danni and Peter’s affair. It was like she was punishing herself for the disappointments in her life caused by other people, by letting go of the people who really did love her, and it wasn’t fair to her at all, because now she really was losing them, and Danni thought that Ellen felt like it was now too late to change. 

“Is Ange with her?” Peter asked. 

“Yeah,” Danni said softly as she took a seat. “Quietly freaking out.”

“I bet,” Oscar said on a sigh. “Reckon I should send an email to everyone letting them know that the party is still on for Wednesday night here? We should still do it, give Mac her awesome present and everything.”

“Of course,” Danni said with wide eyes. “I bet everyone still wants to come. And by the way, on the way to the toilets Mac pointed out that there are streamers sticking out of your desk drawer, Oscar.”

“Oopsie-daisy,” Oscar said on a wide-eyed whisper of realization. All their desk drawers were filled with streamers and balloons yet to be inflated. Caught out. 

“See, we have to have the party now that Mac knows about it,” Peter said. “Sort it.”

Oscar opened his mouth to reply when Angie and Ellen walked in, both looking flushed and apologetic. 

“Sorry for keeping you waiting,” Ellen said as she collapsed into the nearest chair and Angie shut the door before also taking a seat. Peter leant over and started pouring everyone cups of water. Ellen got the first cup. “So there you have it,” she said. “Questions?”

“Yeah, just the whole ‘what’s going to happen to us’ one,” Oscar said gently. “Church explained the selection process for the Taskforce, how it’s all hand picked so we don’t really get a say. Do we need to put in transfer applications?”

“I would strongly encourage it,” Ellen said as she crossed her arms and leant back in her chair. “In fact if you can get a list of preferences together and give them to me, I will start ringing around and calling in favours to get you into a unit you’ll be happy in. For example, Oscar, Surveillance Services would take you in a heartbeat, but if it’s not where you want to be, you need to let me know.”

“It looks like we might need to dust off our uniforms then,” Oscar said. Ellen nodded.

“What about you Mac?” Angie asked. “Are you Taskforce? And Peter, you’ve known for a few days…what are you going to do? Where are you both applying? Because honestly, this is just hitting me, and I have no idea where I want to apply. It’s been eight years since I was in a station on general duties, or in a uniform. But the alternatives have never appealed to me. Any suggestions would be welcome.”

“Obviously Pete’s a definite on the Taskforce,” Oscar said. “He’s got the experience, the solve rate, the connections-”

“You’re forgetting one thing mate,” Peter said as he took his glasses back off and looked to Oscar with a little shrug. “Even if they offered it to me, I’ve still got the power to turn it down.”

“You wouldn’t,” Angie said on a gasp.

“I would,” Peter said, nodding firmly. “This Special Response to Drug Crimes Taskforce is going to have bases of operations spread around the state and they’re going to be using folks like us in long-term assignments, deep undercover. As your mate, I have four words in response to that grand idea: run for your lives.”

“That’s not everyone in the Taskforce though, right?” Oscar asked. “They need other people to help with everything else.”

“Yeah but Peter wouldn’t be one of those other people,” Angie pointed out with a smile as she caught on. “If they made him an offer, it’d be as an operative. Right?”

“I’m assuming so,” Peter said. “And if they do, I’m going to tell them to get stuffed.”

“But…what do you do then?” Oscar asked. “How long have you been in undercover, twenty years?”

“Eighteen,” Peter said with another casual shrug. “I dunno yet. I might take some long service leave. Or if a spot opened up, maybe I could teach a class at the academy part-time or something, give some talks on covert ops…give back a bit, you know?”

“Peter,” Ellen said as she began to smile. “That’s a great idea.”

“I thought so,” he said confidently. “I just came up with it this second, thought I’d try it out for a laugh, but no one’s laughing.”

“Well you basically trained all of us,” Danni said obviously as she gestured around the table. “Mac’s been here ten years, Angie and Oscar eight years, me five…you were a pro even before the boss showed up. You mentored all of us.”

“Does that mean I’ve already given back and now I can retire?” Peter asked. “Great!”

“You’re a few years off that mate,” Oscar said with a laugh. Peter made an ‘eh’ sound in the back of his throat and shrugged as he looked at Ellen more softly. 

“All I know now,” he said. “Is that I’ve worked my last case in undercover.”

Angie groaned and rested her forehead on the desk in front of her. 

“I think everyone needs to take some time,” Ellen said carefully. “There’s no rush. Every undercover unit in the city is about to be gripped by panic and phones are going to start ringing all across HQ as people scramble to talk their way into the Taskforce or into Homicide or into Armed Robbery. And while you can’t leave it until the last minute, the best thing you can do right now is to take a step back and calmly assess your options. Look at your life and what you want to achieve in the next five or ten years, because you now are technically released from any obligations you might feel towards this place and the people in it. You can redesign your life. It’s…a positive.”

“Oh, a positive!” Oscar teased gently with a laugh. “Are you taking time to think, Mac?” he then asked seriously. “Because surely the Taskforce would offer you a job.”

“They might,” she said. “But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking too. I was in the position to see something like this coming. I’ll tell you when I figure it all out.”

“What about you Danni?” Oscar asked. “I mean, Angie’s got her head on the desk so let’s just not go there for now, but you look cautiously optimistic. Ideas?”

Danni looked to Ellen and Peter, panicked because so far no one had said anything about her prearranged plan. Peter gave her a subtle nod that was not lost on Oscar. 

“I’m going to make Detective,” Danni said. “Either in the Taskforce or, uh, Homicide, or so I’m told. Mac’s giving me a reference.”

“Really?” Angie asked as she lifted her head and stared at them. “You can do that?”

“Of course I can,” Ellen said. “Tell me where you want to go and I’ll do my best. Homicide already offered me a job and I turned them down, the least I could do was offer up one of my eager operatives in my place. I’m having lunch with the Head of Homicide at the end of the week and Danni’s going to come along. I sorted it yesterday while Peter was very suspiciously refusing to let me come into the office.”

“Ha,” Angie said with a brief laugh. 

“You’re thinking Taskforce as well, Danni?” Oscar asked.

“Maybe,” Danni said. “If I got an offer I’d consider it, but only if it was part of the Detective training bit. I don’t want to be going undercover and derailing my life. I still think about maybe getting married and having kids, it’s unlikely now but still not impossible, like it would be if I was on assignment for the next few years.”

“Not to mention it really fucks with your head,” Peter said obviously. 

“It’s okay Danni,” Angie said as she put her forehead back on the table. “I think about it too. I’m thirty-three and single and now my brain hurts cos I’m also redundant.”

“Aw honey,” Danni said softly as she laughed and patted Angie’s hunched back. 

“How did you even organise this already?” Angie asked her without looking up.

“The Detective Course was already in the pipeline,” Ellen said quickly. “Danni asked, I organised. She found out about the full restructure today, like the rest of you.”

“Oh, okay,” Angie said limply. “Is it too early for the pub?” 

Peter chuckled at her. 

“Maybe you should take some long service leave too,” he said. 

*

“Ah, here you are,” Oscar said when he found Angie stretched out on one of the beds in the overnight room later that morning. “Can I sit?”

“Sure,” she said. She lifted her legs up and Oscar slid onto the mattress to sit with his back against the wall. She was wearing jeans so when she laid her legs back over his lap, his hands fell on the thick denim covering her shins and knees. “What’s everyone doing?” she asked. 

“The guys are here collecting the contents of Mac’s safe so she and Pete are in there going through logbooks and checking all the quantities of dope and cash we had stocked. Danni’s gone for a drive, God knows where. I managed to get Mac alone for half an hour to talk about my plans though.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked. 

“Mum and dad arrive tomorrow afternoon. It would be really nice if that dinner I asked you to was Thursday, the night before I leave, and Mac says that’s fine…she, Pete, and Danni will run surveillance with just her turn around the park that night, if that’s still okay with you.”

“Of course,” Angie said with a sigh. “I don’t feel like working right now anyway. I suppose we have to tonight.”

“Mac’s not going to run tonight,” Oscar said. “She’s going home once the safe is clear and she won’t be back today. I’ll be in the van with Danni, it’ll just be you running.”

“Okay. So dinner on Thursday night? When do you want me to go shopping with your mum?”

“Whenever Ange, Wednesday or Thursday, it’s up to you. Mum’s excited to see you.”

“I really want to see her too,” Angie said as she covered her face with her hands and groaned to hide the fact tears had filled her eyes. “This is shit, Oscar. I don’t know what I want to do. Maybe I just want to go back to a normal station. Is that stupid? We’re considered elite cops these days. What happens if I take a step backwards?”

“It’s not a step backwards if it’s something you want to do,” Oscar said. “I’ve thought about it too, in the last few hours…and over the last few days, to be honest.”

“You have? Why?”

“Cos mum was upset and finally told me that Brad and Shane don’t want anything to do with the property anymore, and dad’s got a heart problem he doesn’t manage very well that I’ve never told you about – surprise – and so it’s possible that one day pretty soon it could just be mum out there on her own. I can’t do that to her. If I go out there for a few weeks and find that they’ve been struggling, I’ve…got it in the back of my mind that I could transfer out there and move back home, fix up the house properly because it’s in desperate need of renovations, build the business back up…I might surprise myself, or at least my eighteen year old self is currently very bemused.”

Angie scoffed and reached out to pat the hand covering her knees. 

“You’re a good son,” she said. “Maybe this all makes it easier for you to do that.”

“No it doesn’t,” Oscar said. “It would still mean leaving all of you. I’ll be half a day’s drive away. And you and Danni weren’t the only ones sitting in that room earlier thinking about having kids. I think about it too, but I grew up in that town and out in that district, and there isn’t anyone there, you know? No women who’d wanna-”

“How do you know? You barely visit. There could be a really nice young…I dunno, veterinarian or dental hygienist or something you might run into.”

“You think I should marry a dental hygienist?”

“Free teeth cleaning!” Angie pointed out. She uncovered her face to look at him pointedly with her wide blue eyes before they both burst out laughing. 

“Gee Ange, great ideas, but I’m not sure who I’d prefer; the woman who sticks her hands up cow’s bums or the woman who sticks her hands in other people’s mouths.”

“They wear gloves, geez,” Angie said on a sigh as she playfully rolled her eyes. “Anyway, you don’t know who you’re going to meet, none of us do.”

“I just don’t want to move so far away from you all that I’m not a part of your lives,” Oscar said sadly. “I know what I should do as the ‘good son’, but the selfish part of me is screaming out, ‘Hell no, stay with Ange’.”

“Are you still going to be gone for three weeks?”

“No. I was going to stay on for about a week after they got back from the wedding so that I could watch dad around the farm, really suss out how things are going, because mum’s always so cagey on the phone. But I have to get back here before everything is gone, before everyone splits off in different directions. I’ll be back in two weeks. You know, if you’re leaning towards heading back to general duties out in a stationhouse, there are some really good cops and stations out my way…with lots of space to go for long runs. It’s gotta be better than overflowing stations in the city where ninety percent of your time is spent dealing with domestics.”

“How do you know what country cops do?” Angie asked. “You never were one, you went straight from the academy to a station in the city to here.”

“Ah, but I grew up with ‘em,” Oscar said with a lazy chuckle. “They inspired me.”

“Oh brother,” Angie sighed dramatically. “So Mac’s going home sick? That’s a first.”

“She seems okay, just kind of shaky and pale-looking? I reckon she’s hit a wall.”

“Stress?”

“Maybe. Church quietly pulled me aside and said she’s told him that she hasn’t been sleeping well, bad dreams, the usual stuff we all put up with, but for her to tell him that…it must be all this, you know? It’s a lot of pressure to have thought it might be coming for a few months and then all of a sudden to be hit with it. This is her home.”

“It’s all our homes. She’s never cried in front of me before. It was scary, Oscar.”

“What happened?”

“She was washing her hands and she just leant over the basin and started weeping,” Angie said simply as she shrugged. “I didn’t know what to do. If it was Danni I would know, or you or Peter…but Mac never cries. I’ve never seen anything…I’ve seen urgency and fear and stress before, but never even a glistening of tears in her eyes.”

“Maybe she’s cuttin’ loose,” Oscar said. “Opening the floodgates to the real Mac. Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll close again after she has a hot bath and a long sleep.”

“Do you think she’ll be on the Taskforce?” Angie thought aloud in a soft voice. “She said she turned down Homicide. I bet the Taskforce offered her a job as Inspector.”

“Absolutely,” Oscar said. “She just doesn’t want to announce it yet.”


	8. Chapter 8

EIGHT

“What is that?” Ellen asked as she stood at Peter’s front door with him, huddled under the awning in her coat to avoid the evening rain, and pointed to the sign that had been tied to the front fence. It was large and made of plastic board and despite the fading day’s light it still very clearly said For Sale. 

“I decided to go for it,” Peter said as he drew her inside. “Thanks for coming.”

“Well you promised the best winter soup I ever tasted, and until we started not talking about work over our weekly breakfasts I actually didn’t know how much you now liked to cook, so I’ve decided to trust your judgement.”

“Do you trust my judgement on the house sale too?” Peter asked once he shut the front door and followed her slowly into the open plan home. 

Ellen thought it was fitting that Peter had spent nearly twenty years working in a converted factory, because he lived in a converted garage. To her right were the roller door and a polished cement floor parking space for his beloved sports sedan. The kitchen was ahead on the right, with a large, industrial-looking granite island and funky grey tiling wrapped around the wall instead of the more modern polished splash back. It looked straight onto a dining area up the back with a table and four chairs, and to Ellen’s direct left was a comfortable living area with two upholstered couches, a large television on a long cabinet, and a rug to soften the polished cement. 

Ellen could not remember the last time she had been inside Peter’s house and tried to think back over the years. It had been many years, she realised. Nine years, perhaps? Definitely pre-Angie and pre-Oscar; the last time Ellen had been in his home it had still been a worksite, and she and a few old colleagues had helped to paint downstairs.

Peter had since built up into what had once been a loft space office-turned-bedroom area to create an entire second floor. Downstairs, a short hall that led to a small bedroom and tiny bathroom also led to a staircase that took the occupants up to two much larger second-floor bedrooms, both with ensuites. Peter had never invited her in to see the finished product. Ellen only knew about the layout because he had been showing her real estate brochures and talking about this decision to move. He had told her that he had originally bought the old mechanics garage to convert as a way to deal with Alice’s death, and twenty years had since passed. He was done. 

“You’ve done some work to the place since I was here last.”

“Just a bit!” Peter said with a chuckle as he stepped up to the one-step-raised kitchen area and peered into the pot simmering on the stove. Ellen made her way towards the island and gravitated to one of the stools tucked underneath. 

“Do you think it will take long to sell?” she asked as she sat. 

“No,” Peter said with a wise smile as he glanced over his shoulder at her. “It’s viewing by appointment and the agent called just before; he’s already had three calls to arrange the grand tour. I’m still hoping for anything over one-point-five million. It’s not heritage and it doesn’t look so pretty from the outside – although the window in the master bedroom looking out onto the street towards the city is pretty special – but it’s detached, plenty of parking space, and I’ve updated the kitchen and bathrooms in the last year. It would suit a couple or a small family-”

“Just not yours?” Ellen asked with a raised brow. 

“What family?” he shot back with a knowing smile, before shrugging. “I dunno, it’s not what I want anymore, I guess. Perhaps I want a new challenge, to be able to do this or something like it somewhere else, or maybe I just want fancy wooden floors and a fireplace in a leafy street in my old age.”

Ellen laughed and shrugged in reply. It wasn’t her decision, but she was enjoying being included. At Friday’s breakfast Peter had even talked about taking her to some open homes in future weeks, and she felt good about the fact that he seemed to want her there in this new, still hypothetical home more often than twice every ten years.

“Need any help with dinner?” she asked. 

“Narr. How are you going anyway?” Peter replied as he filled a glass of water and handed it to her. 

“Oh, better,” Ellen said on a sigh. “I went home and had a warm bath, I got some chocolate on the way home like you suggested, and had some with a cup of tea. I should sleep better tonight. Well done getting Oscar to agree to cover for you so that you could have the afternoon off as well, Peter. That really wasn’t necessary.”

“Yes it was, I wanted a night off!” Peter said with a mischievous laugh. “But first I told him I wanted to keep an eye on you. They don’t know we’re dating, so he just rolled his eyes at me and said, ‘Yeah whatever mate, good luck with that’…but see, Oscar is now feeling really guilty that he won’t be here much in the next few weeks, so he was really keen to help out! He won’t get many more chances to sit in that communications van, his home-away-from-home…he was easily won over.”

“You’re a cheeky bugger,” Ellen said with a coy grin as he wiggled his eyebrows and smiled proudly. “I hope nothing goes wrong-”

“No, look, my phone is right here on the bench and yours is surely in your bag. Plus, we’re all covering for Oscar and Angie on Thursday night so that she can have dinner with him and his parents. I think his mum is still holding out hope that Angie’s real name actually is Michelle and she really is Oscar’s girlfriend and they really are going to get married one day and have lots of babies. I dunno why Ange plays along.”

“Ange and her worldly parents aren’t close, you know that,” Ellen said softly. “And Oscar’s mum has a big heart. I think Angie’s happy, all things considered. And it doesn’t bother me because I’m barely their boss anymore, so to each their own.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Peter said after a beat. He abandoned the stove completely and turned to lean over the island bench directly opposite her. Ellen put her glass of water back on the granite and nodded as their eyes met. Peter’s smile had faded and his clear blue eyes had narrowed thoughtfully, seriously. “You’ve had an idea that these changes might happen for a few months now,” he said. “Since the budget was circulated and our funding was cut and rumours started up at HQ-”

“I’m sorry I never told you more than I let on,” Ellen said. “I wanted to wait until I knew more myself. It was just office talk, it could have been fabricated, and I didn’t want to put you in a position where you knew something and you weren’t allowed to tell Angie, Danni and Oscar, or any of your other mates at work, possibly for weeks. I’m their boss, not you. There was no need for you to go through that as well.”

“I understand hon,” Peter said gently when he heard the defensive and protective lilt in her tone. “But Elle, I want to know…if you hadn’t known that this was a possibility a month ago when I said we should start having breakfast, if you hadn’t at least suspected that the work situation might change, would you still have said yes?”

“Yes,” Ellen said without hesitating. She bit her bottom lip and took a deep breath as surprise and disbelief flickered briefly across his face. “Because,” she went on, aware that she had to get better at talking about her emotions with him; she didn’t need to hide her heart, and he wasn’t making any effort to hide his from her anymore either. “The thing is,” she finally continued. “I was lonely, and I have been for years.”

“You could have come to me,” Peter said gently. Ellen shook her head.

“No, I couldn’t. Bernie Rocca in my head, remember? And…I’ve told myself for a long time that I’m bad at relationships. They just don’t happen for me. They’re not meant to happen for me. Men don’t fall in love with me, no one’s ever said it to-”

“What about Hollister?” Peter asked quickly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We’d only been together a few months and he’s been dead for four years. It was a more intimate relationship than was normal for me, and he cared for me very much, he pursued me…but I don’t know if he was in love with me. He and I didn’t talk like you and I are now; I still struggled to share my feelings with him. I think I loved him, but I’m not sure if it was the sort of love that meant we would have worked long term. I don’t think I wanted to grow old with him.”

“He wanted that with you,” Peter said. “I’m sure of it.”

“Yeah, and that might have become a problem,” she said. “But back to you and I, I didn’t tell you how much I’d missed you or how lonely I felt because, well…because I’m the boss, and I’m a lot of hard work. I didn’t know that you felt a similar way-”

“You didn’t know I still had feelings for you?”

“I’m not even sure I was aware that you ever had real feelings for me Peter,” Ellen said. “That’s not your fault either, that’s just how it was back then. That year of casual, no-strings sex was great, it was fun and spontaneous and we really clicked, but it wasn’t romantic at all, and we became such good friends in the years after that I almost preferred that later friendship. I told myself that was what we were always meant to be, and I didn’t want to ruin it by trying to pursue you, which I knew I would be very bad at. I did not want to drive you away from me, the unit and the job you loved…but I know I let the friendship slide over the years too, especially since Bill died. I felt guilty for missing him, or for missing what he represented, and who I was when I was with him. I’m so sorry. Like I said, hard work. I’m just not good at this.”

“You are much better at it than you think you are,” Peter said as he reached out and covered her hand with his. “Want to say any more while you’re on a roll?”

“Yes, to answer your actual question, because I haven’t yet. I didn’t say yes to breakfast because I thought working arrangements might change. I didn’t think about it at all in the moment. I said yes because for all the times I’d tried to reach out to you and talked myself out of it, there you were offering me a chance to just say okay. And you made it sound easy, you just said, ‘I think we should do breakfast’, but your eyes were more nervous, and hopeful…and you called me Elle, Peter. No one has ever called me that before. So I said yes because, unlike Bill or anyone else, I honestly still felt like this could happen for us again. Deep down, I wanted it to happen.”

“Do you like being called Elle?” Peter asked. “I know everyone at work and HQ calls you Mac and Ellen, and I’d always called you Mac up until that moment, but when I stood in your office that night…Elle just came out of my mouth, looking at you. I wanted you to know that I was open to hanging out with Elle. I’d seen glimpses of her once, I was pretty sure she was still in there. I’m glad that worked. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, it’s okay,” she said with a soft smile. “I like it. Or Ellen, or Mac, either way. Just don’t call me Elle or Ellen at work because as soon as you do, they’ll know.”

“I haven’t yet,” Peter said on a laugh as she pulled a face. “But it is hard work!”

“Does that set you at ease, Peter?” Ellen asked as she squeezed the hand covering hers. “Please relax with me. This last month, this last week especially, I feel so much better about this, about everything. I feel more like myself. It’s getting easier, faster.”

“Good,” Peter said with a grin. 

“Not always!” she insisted playfully all of a sudden as she thought back to that day. “I’m getting so good at sharing my feelings that I’m starting to do it without thinking, just me, no filter! I burst into tears over a washbasin today, and I don’t think I’ve ever cried at work before. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. What are you doing to me?”

Peter poked his tongue out playfully as he let go of her hand and turned back to the stove. Ellen sighed dramatically and had a long drink of her water. 

“And don’t you dare say it’s personal growth,” she quipped under her breath in a mockingly unimpressed voice. 

“Let’s change the subject then,” Peter said, chuckling happily as he stirred a wooden spoon around inside the saucepan. “Where do you think I should move to?”

“I don’t know,” Ellen said, also laughing at the ridiculous question. “Do you really want a house on a leafy street, or do you want a quiet life in a coastal town? Do you want to be in the city, or just near it? What do you want to do about work, HQ or general duties in the suburbs? Do you even want to stay in the police? Do you want to get a dog one day, or would you be happy in a funky-mod unit somewhere with no pets? You’ve basically shown me brochures for all of the above over the last week, and to be honest I can barely answer those questions for myself, let alone for you!”

“If it hasn’t been clear,” Peter replied as he fetched two bowls from a drawer near the stove. He put them on the island in front of Ellen and looked at her calmly. “I want you to be a part of this decision. Ideally…I want wherever I live to work with your life. Our life. I want you to be comfortable in my home or our home or whatever.”

“Thank you,” Ellen said quietly as she smiled at him. “I’d like that. And if this house sells in a week and you find yourself needing a place to stay until you figure out where you want that new home for you-us-whatever to be, there’s always my place.”

“If you moved one day, would you keep it?” Peter asked curiously. “Or sell it? Do you know how much it’s appreciated in value in the last ten years?”

“I know it’s not as valuable as this house,” Ellen said. “Which was a cheap, empty mechanic’s garage when you bought it twenty years ago, in a grungy city suburb with a high crime rate that no one wanted to live in. Well done you.”

“I’m not just a pretty face,” Peter said with a teasing wink as she smirked at him. 

“If I sold my house I’d be able to pay off the mortgage comfortably,” Ellen added. “But I would then need to find myself another one. And I know that you know that I’ve never really made my house into a home…I don’t know where I would go, or what I would like to do. Long service leave is starting to sound really good after fifteen years in the Force, but what would I come back to afterwards?”

“We should take some time out,” Peter agreed. “Go to the beach, have a holiday.” 

“That would be nice,” Ellen said, smiling. “And you should look into training opportunities in the future. The lack of consistent operational training and management is a real worry for myself and the other Covert Services unit managers now that our units are closing. We’re all so vigilant about procedure and safety; if something happened to any of you because I wasn’t there…for years that has been my greatest fear. It keeps me up at night, especially on nights like this when there’s an op and I can’t be there. But now, if operatives aren’t being handled properly and if colleagues don’t understand what it is that they are really doing, then I can see things going wrong. Maybe not on all jobs, but on some jobs, and even one error is costly.”

“I agree,” Peter said. “But also, it’s not your job to fix that for everyone, not anymore. You’ve looked after all of us; we’re all still alive and pretty much unscathed. The fact that I’m still me and not a crackpot or dead is probably a minor miracle. I’ve done twenty-six years all up; I’m the longest serving undercover operative in the state and I’ll probably always hold that record now. That could be enough for us too, right?”

“Right,” Ellen agreed. “It’s certainly enough for you, Peter. Genuinely, you should get an award. But you also have fourteen years before you hit compulsory retirement at sixty. That’s a long time. You would be an excellent Sergeant, wherever that was.”

“Yeah, and how long before you hit sixty, another twenty-three years? What do you want to achieve in that time? Hell, the sky’s the limit. Commissioner Mackenzie?”

“I’m too tired to think about the amount of time and effort I would need to put into the job before I could make Commissioner,” Ellen said with a grimace. “Do you want me to set the table or something?” she asked as Peter turned the stove off and moved the bowls to begin spooning soup into them with a large, stainless steel ladle. 

“Let’s make a deal, to stop us going around in circles,” Peter said five minutes later when they sat opposite each other at the dining room table with their soup and some bakery bread between them. “Let’s both take long service leave, maybe two months, which is about half of what you’d be entitled to, and a fraction of my time, and if after two months we’re still not sure we want to go back to the cops, then we won’t.”

“That would make decision-time three months from now,” Ellen said. 

“Better than tomorrow! Trust your gut, Mac,” Peter said. “What do you reckon?”

“I know I need at least two months off,” she admitted. “It’s a deal, and even if I end up taking all my leave, once I’m refreshed if I want to go back I don’t think that will be a problem. You are still sitting your Sergeant’s exam, right? You must, Peter.”

“You bet,” he said with a grin. “In ten years we could be pretty awesome old cops.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ellen replied, laughing. “In ten years I’ll be the age you are now, and that’s a fact, so there.” She hesitated, and then added, “So does this agreement mean that you’ll be looking for a new home here in the city? You’re not going to buy a cabin near some beach along the coast and build boats or something?”

“Only if you come with me,” Peter replied quickly. “And it’d have to be a high-spec cabin, we have taste, so I’m not sure if you and me – combined – could afford it.”

“You do realise that we haven’t even kissed again yet, don’t you Church?” Ellen asked with a smug smirk as she raised a brow. The way he was talking about the two of them was reassuring but also hilarious and frightening. Then again, she had said some pretty frightening stuff herself, and she had to stop herself automatically assuming that this was now a forever thing. It might not be. Especially if they both stayed in the police and, Heaven forbid, something happened. Injury. Death. Kaboom.

Stop it Ellen, she told herself. Nothing bad was going to happen, that was just the professional exhaustion talking, and she would much rather be talking about kissing with the man she wanted to kiss who was sitting across from her, who was mid-joke. 

“Oh, right,” Peter said on a thoughtful frown. “Do you think we’ve forgotten how?”

Maybe she would make him wait a little longer, she reasoned. It served him right.


	9. Chapter 9

NINE

On Tuesday night it was Oscar and not Danni who joined Peter in the communications van to watch Angie and Ellen run around the park. Ellen had decided that since she and Angie and Peter and Oscar were all having a night off over the course of the week, Danni should as well. Oscar hadn’t minded that he was called to cover a shift in the communications van for the second night in the row, he always did like surveillance, and he hadn’t worked with Peter in the surveillance van for months.

“How long are we doing this again?” he asked as Peter settled in and turned the monitors on now that they were stationary.

“Next Friday, which will make it a two week job,” Peter said. “Unless they make an arrest earlier, and of course this might all fizzle out and there won’t be any more attacks here and no arrests will be made, or at least not by us.”

“Unlikely,” Oscar agreed. “I mean, you’d have to be a moron to try for the sixth time in just over two months, right? In the same spot? Even if we are dangling two lovely ladies right under their nose…you’d have to be a bloody idiot!”

“Hold that thought,” Peter said wisely. “The little fucker probably is one. Sorry about dragging you away from mum and dad on their first night here. Did they get in okay this afternoon? Safe drive down and all that?”

“Yeah, fine,” Oscar said. “I’m glad I was home to greet them and get ‘em settled. Dad spent the first half-hour criticising my place though. First, how dare I still be renting, at my age? The gardens are overgrown and the windows are filthy and the kitchen is small, and good God, the shower is a shower-bath combo that you have to step into. No separate tub! The scandal!”

Peter laughed loudly before pausing to give Angie the okay to commence her run. 

“Dads, eh?” he replied to Oscar, thinking briefly back to his own dad, who was less critical of houses and far more critical of his wife and son. Too critical. “He just wants to make sure you’re in a good home, a safe home.”

“Yeah, and in the back of his mind he’s comparing where I live to the property and the home I left behind and thinking, ‘the home I gave this boy is so much better, why did he ever leave?’ He will never let me forget.”

“Your mum’s okay with it?”

“Yeah, that’s just dad,” Oscar simply said. “He doesn’t speak for mum, thankfully. She told me I had a lovely house, thank you very much! The worst she did was pull me aside and ask where Angie slept when she stayed over. She winked at me!”

Peter laughed again at the pointed look of desperation on Oscar’s face. 

“I said, ‘Mum, I told you, Angie doesn’t stay over’. ‘Oh, that’s right, that’s fine Cam,’ she says in reply, but her eyes are twinkling as though she doesn’t believe me and is just playing along.”

“So this visit is cos you’re getting a sister-in-law, right?” Peter asked. “They’re on the way to the wedding? How come you’re not going?”

“Didn’t know about it, can’t leave work for that long, would rather head back to the farm and take care of things there. I want to make sure dad’s not letting it run down…he’s getting a bit doddery. He’s like an old man which is scary because he’s only fifty-eight-”

“Get outta here!” Peter said with wide eyes as he stared at Oscar in shock. “He’s fifty-eight? Your dad.”

“Yeah, mum had me when she was twenty-one and dad was twenty-four. I’m thirty-four, he’s fifty-eight. But as fit and wiry as he still is, he’s got a dodgy heart and he’s started repeating things he’s already spoken about, and I dunno…mum’s concerned. I want to check the farm, so that’s how I’m spending my time. Brad won’t mind, since he didn’t even call me to tell me he was getting married to this hot redhead Victoria.”

“Angie tells me she’s rich?”

“Her family is, yeah. Loaded. Another thing dad hates, because apparently, ‘it never works out when the woman is wealthier than the man, it damages their egos’. Pfft. I told him it’s less about the money and more about the family and the people and the love…we’ll see what he says after he meets them all, because none of us have. Up until now, me leaving for the academy and running away from home to do it was the worst scandal in our family. This could finally knock me back down to second place!”

“You’ll have to send your little brother a special thank you card then,” Peter said with a smirk as he and Oscar continued to watch Angie run. 

There was no money on the track that evening, and nothing seemed suspicious. Angie was completing her multiple loops more quickly than she had been because the rain had stayed away, the air and the ground underfoot were dry, so she declared over her headphones that she would do an extra loop, to make sure she used her full time. 

“Does she ever get tired?” Peter asked rhetorically as Oscar flicked the switch to tell Angie that they’d heard her and that it was fine. 

“I doubt it,” Oscar replied. “She’s looking good though, so healthy. She doesn’t overdo it. I don’t think any marathons are on the cards.”

“Have you talked to her about all this work stuff yet?” Peter asked. 

“Ah, a bit. She’s all mixed up about what she wants. Join the club, I told her. Did you get any more information out of Mac yesterday after you left? You did do what you said you were going to do and check in on her at some point, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Peter said. “And just like you predicted, she was her usual, bossy-britches, ‘I’m fine, go away Church’, self. I didn’t pester her for more information about the work situation though. She’s told us everything she knows, I’m certain of that. I checked on her to make sure she was emotionally okay and that she ate a proper dinner and stuff like that. She was fine. She’s just over it, mate. So over it.”

“I don’t think Mac’s ever been over it before.”

“Well, now she is,” Peter said. “I’ve been there, so has Ange, so have you. Usually it results in us sleeping with women on the job – or men in Angie’s case – who we’re not supposed to touch. At least I only slept with the sister of a murderer, and not the actual murderer. That was some sound judgement, Stoney.”

“Ow, that hurts!” Oscar said on a laugh as Peter smirked at him. “And you didn’t just sleep with Christina Rossi. You proposed. You tried to quit. Unfortunately, you know, she died, but that’s still taking it way further than me, that one time! It was ages ago.”

“It really was,” Peter said. “But uh, is there anyone on the horizon right now mate?” 

“Nope,” Oscar said as he stared at the screen. He gestured to Angie. “Unless you count her. Mum sure does.”

“Neither of you do much to disappoint her. There’s something in that.”

“Yeah, maybe. How about you?” Oscar asked.

“I haven’t been with a woman in years mate,” Peter said. “Must be getting old.”

“You always were a bit ugly,” Oscar said. “Those blue eyes and all? Blergh.”

Peter chuckled. 

“It was interesting that the girls brought up kids yesterday though,” Oscar said more softly as they watched Angie run. “I’ve never heard them talk about wanting kids.”

“Well they wouldn’t, would they?” Peter asked. “At work? With us? They were just so shocked that it came up in conversation without, uh, what would Mac call it? Self-censoring. Yeah, without that, which is what they’d do normally as female cops. There’s probably a secret note that gets passed around at the academy that says don’t talk about wanting babies on the job, especially not with policemen who might hold it against you and derail your career forever…never mind that in reality it’s just us, but the women worry about that stuff! Do you think about having kids one day too?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Oscar said as he nodded seriously. “I know you always wanted them too, mate. It could still happen.”

“Oh yeah,” Peter said on a sigh. “But now I think, ‘well, if I had a kid at fifty they might still be a kid when I kick the bucket’, and I dunno if that’s fair.”

“Those years are worth it though, if it’s what you want. Wait; can we talk about this stuff with each other at work? I didn’t miss out on a secret guy note?”

“No,” Peter said, chuckling. “We can talk about it. And I just reckon I’m at the stage where I’m done trying to force it. If it happens, if I meet someone who wants that, then terrific, we’ll go for it and see what happens. If it doesn’t happen, like if the woman I want to be with is older or she doesn’t want a child, then that’s probably okay too. If I loved her, if she loved me regardless, then it wouldn’t matter.”

“It’s still a deal-breaker for me,” Oscar said. “The no-kids thing. Women like Mac, for example. And it’s nothing against her, I just couldn’t be with someone who didn’t like kids, who wouldn’t even be comfortable around a niece or nephew, if I had one. Mac gets squicked out by the idea of an eight year old. I’ve seen her face on the few times she’d had to go undercover with kids, or had to be around ‘em.” 

Peter stared at him pointedly since they had crossed over into talking about Ellen behind her back. Oscar held up his hands and directed Peter’s attention to the screens. 

“Hey, no judgement,” Oscar added. “I love Mac. I just meant…It’s cool you’ve reconciled maybe not having kids now you’ve reached a certain age and it hasn’t happened, but I still want it, and I’d like to be with a woman who felt the same way.”

“Yeah,” Peter said on a sad and thoughtful sigh. 

Peter knew that Oscar did not know Ellen as well as he thought. Ellen did scrunch up her nose whenever children happened into their cases, but Oscar – and Angie and Danni – did not know that their boss was adopted. They didn’t know that Ellen and her adopted mother had a cold, disconnected relationship which meant that physical affection hadn’t been given easily by the mother to her two adopted children in their lives together, and they definitely did not know that her adopted brother was a convicted rapist recently tried and sentenced to a second jail term for his third rape, that he committed on parole. Michael liked forcing slender brunette women, and he wouldn’t be let out again now for a long time. Peter could not be happier about that.

Peter had also sat through plenty of therapy himself. He had lived through family violence, though unlike Ellen his mother had been gentle and loving. He had also watched Ellen for long enough to have been able to figure it out over the years.

Of course she made out that she didn’t like babies; she hadn’t grown up with any concept of herself as a mother. She wasn’t the most maternal woman, that was fine and natural and Peter accepted that, but on top of that he knew Ellen had needed to teach herself how to be affectionate, with friends and with men. She hadn’t seen it happening around her and copied, she’d had to find it within herself and drag it out. She also had zero self-belief in her ability to be a better mother than the one who had raised her. She wanted to be better, but if she took the risk and failed she would never forgive herself. He remembered her words from just the previous night. She had accepted that relationships just didn’t happen for her. That meant no partner, and no kids, so pulling a face and looking away was just her way to cope, perhaps.

Peter thought it was sad that she had put up that barrier. It was the opposite of what he had done, but he had his mother’s softness. Peter did not blame Ellen for taking another path to save her soul; it just wasn’t fair. Ellen had been allowed to write herself off as a worthy part of a family far too easily, far too early on in life, probably when she was a teenager. Yet Peter recalled the finer details of their motel-hopping affair very well. There was the way she held him and comforted him if a job had gone badly, and the way she would nuzzle and kiss his neck and shoulder in bed after really great sex, and the way they sometimes laced their fingers together, holding hands in bed with equal strength. They had been and still were equals, they looked each other in the eyes when they spoke, and she had protected him on the job, always. So she was naturally affectionate and loving, and she felt happiness and softness deeply, even when she didn’t feel she was safe enough to put it on show. 

Jesus, Peter knew all about not feeling safe. 

He was desperately excited to meet her biological mother and half-sister come Saturday. He was thrilled that Ellen had forged that relationship slowly and privately over the past three years. He could not wait to see if, in these women, he saw her. 

“Yoo-hoo,” Oscar said as he waved his hand in front of Peter’s face. “Still with me?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, sorry,” Peter said. He focused back in on the monitors that he had been staring at but not seeing. Angie was gone, she was finished. Bugger, Peter thought. How long had he zoned out for?

“What were you thinking about?” Oscar asked. 

“Uh…just family stuff,” Peter said vaguely. “My family,” he said more certainly after a brief pause. It was true.

“Ah, I hear you,” Oscar said as he sighed and shook his head, oblivious. “I hope mum and dad aren’t waiting up for me. I told them not to, but what’s the bet they do?”

“Old habits are hard to break, mate,” Peter said. “Give them time.”

It had worked for him, at least, and he was so damn happy. 

*

Ellen felt re-energised as she began her jog around the running track, but she tempered that with the slow, dorky pace of her baseball-cap wearing alter ego, Leanne. It was lighter than it had been on previous nights, as the rain and even some of the lower cloud cover had stayed away. Actual sky was visible, and it was turning a deep shade of bluey-purple.

“Mac your friend is back for a puff,” Peter chirped in her ear. “Blonde, not beard.”

“Copy that,” she mumbled as she slowed to a walk, apparently so puffed she couldn’t even make it up that first initial climb from the park’s entrance to the bend. Ha. 

She reached to the bend and laughed a bit when she saw the thin blonde man standing there smoking. 

“Hello again. Now I know I’m new to the area, but is this the equivalent of behind the back shed of the oval or what?”

“Yeah sorry,” he said as she walked past him. He stepped out of her way, into what Ellen recognised as one of the blind spots. “Close to home and all that.”

“Fair enough,” Ellen replied happily. Her path onwards was uninterrupted, but she would be back. “Enjoy.”

*

“What do we have on this guy anyway?” Oscar asked in the van. 

“He sort of matches the vague description from the victims,” Peter said. “Average height, thin. But only one of them has been able to complete a photo-fit and we don’t have a consistent report of hair or eye colour because I guess the lighting and the time of day make it difficult. Like, when I was in my twenties some people said I had blonde hair, but I didn’t, it just looked that way in the sun at certain times of day, especially if I’d been at the beach. I think that’s what this is, cos Mac can see he’s blonde, but she’s out there probably paying more attention than the average jogger.”

“It might not even be him,” Oscar said. “Do we know who he is?”

“Sex Crimes cops working the beat during the day haven’t seen him. He’s a contender.”

“It’s weird that he stands directly in the middle of the path, and only moves aside if someone comes along,” Oscar said. “If you were gonna go for a smoke, surely you’d stand to the side automatically? If a cyclist comes around that bend like they do sometimes, you’d be wiped out!”

“Again, this guy’s not getting points for intellectualism,” Peter said. “Or common sense…and our perp, whoever he is, isn’t known for his good manners either.”

“Got that right,” Oscar said under his breath. “I hate working sexual assaults.”

“We don’t do it often,” Peter said as his eyes tracked Ellen across the computer screens. The smoker watched her run away and disappear around the bend.

“I still hate them,” Oscar said. “They give me the willies.”

Peter chuckled and nodded. It was such a farm boy thing to say, even if it was true.

“Mac looks much better today though,” Oscar continued. “And most of the tech guys and everyone else aren’t calling for her head, they’re just getting on with the job.”

“Yeah, that’s been reassuring,” Peter said calmly. “We’ve been a good team.”


	10. Chapter 10

TEN

Angie took a deep breath and smoothed her palms down the front of her denim skirt as she walked from her car to Oscar’s front door. His car was parked in the driveway, but his parent’s old SUV was on the street directly in front of where she had pulled up. It was early, eight-thirty in the morning, but Angie knew that Shirley was an up-and-go morning person, and Angie had to be at work to run the op again that evening anyway; she wanted to make sure Shirley didn’t feel rushed being with her, she wanted to be able to relax and sit in a coffee shop to talk for an hour if they felt like it. 

It had been six years, though, and Angie was nervous. The last time they had parted, Oscar had just told his mother that Michelle was a fabrication, and that really this woman’s name who had visited his family’s property was Angie, she was a policewoman and they were mates who worked together in Covert Services. Oscar had told a little white lie over the phone to keep his mother happy and it escalated. Angie had really needed a break from work. He said, ‘come home with me for a few days’, and why not, right? It would have been harmless if some wanker psycho hadn’t followed them out there and tried to put a bullet in Shirley and Oscar’s heads. Angie had put things right, but her bravery and tactical skills had needed some explaining.

Shirley had looked disappointed to learn the truth but she had said she understood, she had playfully scolded Oscar in front of Angie even though Angie knew how much being lied to like that would have hurt her; Angie felt awful for her part in it. Yet Shirley had hugged her tightly and told her not to be a stranger. Angie hadn’t listened. 

Please still like me, she thought desperately as she opened the unlocked screen door herself and knocked on the closed wooden door that was likely still deadlocked.

“Coming!” Oscar called from somewhere inside. Angie smiled when the door opened. She waved innocently. 

“Just me,” she said as Oscar let her in, still dressed in long navy pyjama parts, a t-shirt and a navy and white flannel shirt. He was tall and lean and he had broad, masculine shoulders, but he still looked like a ten year old dag in his pyjamas, especially when his straight, light brown hair was looking fluffy and sticking up in every direction. 

“Bit early for you Stone?” she asked in jest as he shut and locked the door. She pointed between his attire and hers, a simple skirt, t-shirt and cardigan, and laughed. “You know it took me ten seconds to put real clothes on this morning, right?”

“I’ve got the morning off!” Oscar said, laughing. Angie had hung back in the hallway when usually she would have walked straight down the hall towards his kitchen and living room, but he didn’t mind leading the way. Her cheeks were flushed so he knew she was nervous. “This way, in case you forgot,” he said as he plodded ahead in bare feet. Angie rolled her eyes and clutched her handbag as she followed.

Shirley and Charlie Pierce were sitting at the dining table reading, although one brief glance at Shirley told Angie that Shirley was only pretending to read. She had instead been eavesdropping on their conversation and flicking her eyes up every few seconds trying to spot her son and his friend on their return. 

“Your friend’s here mum,” Oscar said as he perched on a kitchen stool and gestured between Angie and the couple at the table. Charlie, whose hair had gone white, raised his head from the large city broadsheet. His brown eyes looked Angie up and down, while Shirley pushed her chair out and hurriedly stood. “You remember Angie,” Oscar added. 

“Of course we do!” Shirley said. She was no taller than Angie, her blonde hair was the colour of light straw and she had the same blue-green eyes as Oscar, the same smile. She was soft and curvy and she looked almost exactly the same as Angie remembered, with perhaps a few extra wrinkles, but Angie had those too. 

“Angie!” she exclaimed happily. She opened her arms and Angie held onto her bag with one hand as she wrapped both arms around Shirley’s waist. Their hug was warm and secure but brief, and as they parted Shirley took Angie’s wrists in her hands to step back and look her up and down. “Gosh, you’re just like I remember, so beautiful,” she said as she looked into Angie’s hesitant blue eyes. “It is so good to see you again. You look well?”

“Yes, I’m terrific,” Angie assured her as she blushed. “You? Welcome to the city.”

“Oh yes, it’s been a very long time,” Shirley agreed with a laugh. “We’re fine though. We’ve had such a relaxing morning so far…a sleep in, even! Seven o’clock!” 

Charlie scoffed from the table and met Angie’s eyes to show her his somewhat frustrated amusement. They were both usually up before dawn, hard at work by eight-thirty in the morning, and suddenly Angie really knew why Oscar was still in his pyjamas and slowly munching on toast at the kitchen bench; he was making a point.

“I’m so excited about our morning on the town,” Shirley continued. “And I’m glad I’m not the only one wearing denim. I thought maybe jeans were too casual-”

“You look fine mum,” Oscar assured her mid-chew. 

“What are the two of you going to do this morning?” Angie asked Oscar. 

“I have to go in at ten to help with archiving and inventory. Mac, Pete and Danni are all coming in early too…actually Danni’s probably there already this morning because she’s smuggling in more party supplies before Mac arrives. So there is absolutely no need to rush, okay? Ange, four p.m.”

“That gives us plenty of time to fit in a nice lunch and coffee,” Angie assured him with a smile. “Shirley, I thought we’d drive, in case the wedding present we pick out for Brad and Victoria is heavy or fragile, or if we just end up with a lot of bags!”

“That’s fine darling,” Shirley said as she smiled at them both. “Shall we go?”

“Yes, let’s,” Angie agreed as Shirley picked up her coat and handbag from the nearby living room couch. “Bye Charlie, I’ll probably see you when we get back.”

Charlie waited until Angie and Shirley were halfway down the hallway before replying.

“No worries Michelle.”

“Dad!” Oscar growled playfully, as Charlie cracked up laughing. 

“What? She looks just like her!”

“He is never gonna let Cam forget that, is he,” Angie said seconds later, still laughing softly to herself, as she and Shirley left the house and walked to her car. 

“Nope.” Shirley got into the car and looked at Angie with a gentle smile on her face as they put on their seatbelts. Angie met her eyes curiously. “But I have.”

“Thank you,” Angie said softly as she took a deep breath and focused on driving. 

*

“Cam told us about work,” Shirley said an hour later as they were browsing in the women’s wear section of the inner-city department store. Shirley had wanted to pick up a new shirt for Charlie and the wedding gift first, but Angie knew shopping for an outfit for mother of the groom could take the most time; they were doing that first. 

“Oh, yeah,” she said on a sigh as she flicked through a rack of mostly corporate-looking dresses in blacks and greys and purples. Shirley really wasn’t a dressy woman and she wasn’t built to wear anything clingy. She also definitely didn’t suit the colours that seemed to be in fashion that winter. She had a similar colouring to Angie, only her eyes were darker and her skin lighter, it didn’t tan. “How do you feel about skirts?” Angie asked her hopefully. Shirley pulled a face that made Angie laugh. 

“I just don’t want to look frumpy,” Shirley said. Angie offered her a kind, understanding smile that was an attempt to silently rebut her. “Don’t look at me like that, Angie,” Shirley said with a wise smirk. “If I wear any of these dresses I’ll look awful. I’ve barely worn a dress since my wedding.”

“What about…” Angie said as she hesitated and looked Shirley up and down. “What about some really nice black pants, a sparkly or kind of formal top, and one of those long-sleeved jackets that are a bit like a thin cardigan or a short cape? Similar to what you’re wearing now, which you’re comfortable in…just more tailored?”

“Lead the way,” Shirley said hopefully. Angie grinned. “And you’re not getting out of talking about your job that easily,” Shirley added. 

“Ah, you caught that,” Angie said as they moved on to a range of long, black pants. Something wide-legged and soft and swishy, Angie thought as she browsed. 

“What are you going to do, now that your station is closing?” Shirley asked. “Though Cameron calls it a ‘unit’; the same thing, I suppose. A station that’s hidden.”

“Yes, it’s about the same,” Angie said as she paused her search and looked into Shirley’s curious blue-green eyes. “I was thinking of going back to a job at a normal station. Did Cam tell you about the new branch they’re creating, the Taskforce?”

“For drugs, yes,” Shirley said. “It’s a very good idea, but not at the cost of your jobs!”

“Well we’re not losing our jobs, not exactly. When you join the police you sort of sign up to this idea that you could be sent anywhere. It doesn’t often happen like that once you’re out of the academy and they’ve put you somewhere, but this is one of those times. I’m not sure about the Taskforce. We don’t really get a say as to whether or not we get in, they’ll be making us offers…and I’m not hopeful.”

“Why not?” Shirley asked. 

“Oh, because there are a few other units like ours around the city, and they’re not going to take everyone into the Taskforce, they want some of us to be redistributed to other sections. They’re also going to take the best operatives, the ones with the most experience in drugs and certain types of undercover work…and our boss, Ellen Mackenzie…Mac?”

“Ah yes, I’ve heard a lot of Mac.”

“She’s a shoe-in for one of the top jobs, she’s amazing. So is our colleague Peter. They won’t want to take us all…there’s also our friend Danni who is going to start training to be a Detective. It would be a good chance for her to be mentored by some good people, maybe even mentored by Mac if they go together. I don’t know if I really see myself making that move too. It’s so unlikely that we will all get offers.”

“You don’t think you’re as good as them?”

“When it comes to Mac and Pete, I know I’m not,” Angie said with a laugh. “But that’s okay. Maybe it’s time I start thinking about other things I might want to do. It was only sprung on us the other day!”

“Well I’ve only gotten a little out of my son over the years about your job, once he deigned to tell me what it was he actually did-”

“I’m sorry about that,” Angie said softly. “This is even really weird for me…we never talk about work to outsiders, even people in our own families. My parents think I work in a normal station writing speeding tickets and breaking up family arguments, and that’s hard enough for them to accept.”

“You are in a very dangerous part of the job.”

“It’s not as dangerous as it sounds,” Angie said. “Sure, if you’re what we call on long-term assignment or deep undercover, and you’re just dropped into this community of criminals for months at a time, or years, and you only have minimal contact with your colleagues to report in every so often…you know some cops join biker gangs, or they get put in jail cells, and those are the jobs where it’s really tough on the cop and it’s dangerous. But our unit, we mostly do short assignments, building up to a couple of months at most, and no one ever goes in full-time on their own.”

“Is that unusual?” Shirley asked. 

“Uh, I’m not sure really. This is the only unit I’ve ever worked in, and Mac has always been really picky about what cases we take on. She is absolutely pedantic about having the right amount of backup and planning for consequences, even on the short jobs that we look at and, in our cocky copper way, think, ‘too easy’. All the work that goes into it behind the scenes is not easy at all, and it takes a long time to organise, like the sorts of background stories we’re making up, fake families and fake IDs and fake work history, plus our characters and even our hairstyles are sometimes planned. It’s really just acting in a space that’s more controlled than it appears. Things still go wrong, but we don’t always feel unsafe. Cops are always watching or listening in, and most of the time it’s kind of fun. No matter where I go, I’m going to miss it.”

“Now see,” Shirley said when Angie shrugged and went back to looking at pants with her. “If Cam had just explained it to me like you did, I might not have worried so much all these years.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He’s always said, ‘I can’t really talk about it mum, but don’t worry. It’s just a job.”

“Oh, Cameron,” Angie said as she laughed sadly and rolled her eyes. 

“I hope you get more words out of him. He’s like his father that way.”

“Cam’s very chatty, but we’re trained not to talk about it,” Angie said gently. “He’s probably trying to protect you, considering what happened six years ago when we visited. He blamed himself for leading that guy out there. He worries about you.”

“As long as he’s talking to you about it, if not me,” Shirley said. She picked up a pair of pants and held them out to Angie. “What about these? They’re a nice cut, I think.”

“Very,” Angie replied. “Let’s get a few different styles, maybe in a couple of sizes. You never know in this place if a size twelve is really going to be a twelve, or if it’s secretly a ten, or a sixteen.”

Shirley laughed as she nodded. 

“Angie love,” she said softly after a few minutes of gathering pants and moving on to look at tops. “Thank you for sharing all of that with me.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Angie said dismissively. “The unit’s about to fold, so I can pretty much talk about whatever I want without putting anyone in danger. Plus, since last time we met I was Michelle for the most part, maybe the more I talk, the more you feel like you’ve got the real person standing in front of you, not a policewoman wearing one of many masks.”

“I see that,” Shirley said with a knowing smile. “And you were the real person out on my farm when you were Michelle. You had a different name, but that woman and this one are still one and the same, even after six years. Same eyes, same woman in there. I can only hope that Victoria is as lovely and as strong. I hope she’s a good person.”

“Well, what has Brad told you about her?” Angie asked. “I’m not an expert, my social life is non-existent and has been for years – thanks job! – but when you’re telling your mum about a partner, don’t you describe them? Surely he’s given you a run down.”

“Brad is a man of even fewer words than Cameron,” Shirley said. “Actually, it’s strange, because until the last few months Cam was the boy I saw the least, but he and I have always had the best relationship; there’s an ease of talking to one another and joking around that I’ve never really had with Shane or Brad. I don’t want to say it’s because he’s my eldest child or because he’s my favourite, that’s not true, it’s just-”

“Your personalities are more compatible,” Angie said simply. “I get that. My little sister and my mum had the most compatible personalities in my family. They got on really well, but my sister made some bad choices and she’s, well, she struggles with a heroin addition, and my mum couldn’t handle that. She and dad now spend most of their time overseas…in fact they deliberately took their design business to the US to get away. Meanwhile I’m just like, ‘um, I’m still here guys’…but I’m just a cop.”

“Honey you’re not just anything,” Shirley assured her with a worried grimace as Angie browsed the racks picking up a half a dozen different tops and more flowing, long-sleeved tops that Shirley could layer on top. 

“But I understand,” Angie said to Shirley. “Brad didn’t say much?”

“He’s so like Charlie. ‘She’s really good,’ he told me. ‘She’s nice, she’s beautiful, she’s doing this or that with the business, I’ve been doing this or that on the property too’…actually, he spent more time talking about the property than his fiancée. Now, I know Michelle was an exaggeration of sorts, but Cam spent long minutes talking you up to me before I ever met you. Even Charlie, when he met you before me, started rabbiting on about how maybe our son was finally getting his life on track because of this gorgeous woman who was taking care of him – don’t even get me started on that ridiculous notion, by the way – but while Cam and even my grouchy husband talk about the women in their lives, there’s just something about my conversations with Brad that has been bugging me. I feel it in my guts, there’s something not right here.”

“You’ll find out soon enough, I suppose,” Angie said with a frown. Her heart thudded. “If…if they’d given us all more warning, we probably could have arranged it so that Oscar and I both could have gone with you and Charlie, for support-”

“Oscar?” Shirley asked with a raised blonde eyebrow. Angie hesitated, her blue eyes wide and mouth open. Oops, she thought. She’d lost focus for a second. Shirley continued with, “Is that his name here? He told me he used an alias, for added protection. He never told me what it was, and now I know why. Oscar? Really?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Angie said as she winced. “Oscar Stone. I don’t have one though; I’m really Angie Piper. Ange. My uh, my family don’t need any added protection.”


	11. Chapter 11

ELEVEN

Angie rushed back to the factory after finishing her run through the park. Ellen, Peter and Danni were not much more than an hour behind her, and she wanted to make sure everything to do with the party was sorted. She was not disappointed. As the roller door wound up and she rolled her car inside to park beside Oscar’s, she discovered that in the short time the four of them had left in their cars and the communications van, Oscar and the rest of their staff who could be there had excelled themselves.

There were streamers and coloured balloons everywhere. Balloons were tied to drawers and computers, and loose balloons continued to bounce on desks and chairs and the floor. At least a hundred of them were about, which meant someone had hired a couple of pumps, or someone had brought their own pumps in to do the job. Streamers and crepe strips of bright pink and blue and green and yellow were also wound all the way up the stairs to the landing. Someone had gotten on their ladder and tied streamers and balloons around all the light fixtures and fans. Angie got out of her car and stared with an open mouth as people moved about around her, hurrying with armfuls of balloons and streamers and boxes of alcohol. 

“Hey Ange,” Oscar said as he came up to her pinching an inflated balloon that she soon discovered had helium in it. He inhaled some of it and then said, in a voice high and chirpy, “What’s this about you telling my mum my real name?”

“Your real name is Cameron Pierce,” Angie told him with a pointed smirk. “Don’t let that gas go to your head. Why aren’t more balloons floating?”

“The helium just got here!” Oscar said as his voice transitioned quickly back to normal. He chuckled. “Want some?”

“No, I’m going to quickly go and have a shower and get changed before they get back. This place looks amazing! What the Hell happened? I know we planned for it to be good, but this is next level for our crew. It looks like a rainbow spit up in here!”

“After Monday’s news, I think people are more keen than ever to have a fun night out with everyone, and rainbow spit makes everything better,” Oscar said as he followed her to the locker room. “And, we have so much grog and so many bags of chips, and we’ll order pizzas once Mac is here and is suitably impressed. It’s gonna be great!”

“Forget Mac, I’m suitably impressed!”

“Well I’m glad,” Oscar said. He leant against his locker and watched her retrieve her toiletries, towel and a change of clothes. “Now what’s this about you telling my mum all about our job and setting her mind at ease? How did that end up being so easy, all of a sudden? I popped home while you were on your way here, and when I got there she gave me a hug and reiterated that she loved you and she loved me and it freaked me out. I take it you two ladies had a good chat?”

“We did,” Angie said. “But I’m not going to recount it for you. You wanted me to take your mum out and show her a good day in the city. Check. You wanted me to help her find something brand new to wear to the wedding that she felt beautiful in. Check. You wanted me to help her pick out a wedding present while we talked about Brad and the mystery Victoria. Check. Oh, and clothes for your dad, we did that too. Of course, in between, we mostly just talked about you. Did I leave anything out?”

“Did you have to be so charming?” Oscar asked. “She gave me the look again.”

“What look?”

“The suck it up and marry her look.”

Angie laughed loudly as Oscar simply raised his brow. 

“Well, on your knees then,” Angie said as she pointed downwards. “Have at it.”

“Have at it? Oh, that’s romantic.”

“I thought you’d be pleased I told her about work, and that it set her mind at ease.”

“I am, I am,” he said softly as he frowned, still frustrated. “I was just surprised.”

“Oscar,” Angie said as she patted his chest affectionately and smiled. “I am genuinely sorry that the Oscar Stone part slipped out. It’s hard for me to have to call you Cam all of a sudden when I know you so well. Also, maybe your mum just hugged you and told you she loved you because she wanted to and because she appreciates you. She’s just being your mum, and it doesn’t sound like she’s gotten much love from Shane or Brad lately, so don’t you dare pull away.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Oscar assured her as he blushed. “You know me Ange, I chat to mum every week or two. I just always tried to keep this life and that life separate.”

“And she understands that now,” Angie said softly, before she quickly grinned at him. “Because of me, because I am spectacular and you would be lucky to have me. Now, I really need to shower because I want to be out front to shout surprise, so bye-bye.”

“Okay…but you’re definitely still coming to dinner at mine tomorrow night too?”

“Of course Oscar, you’re leaving for two weeks on Friday, and who knows how long it’ll be before I get to spend some time with your very kind parents again. Shirley can feed me with love and you can feed me with food, it’s win-win…for me.”

Oscar laughed and grasped her shoulder affectionately. 

“Thank you Ange,” he said. 

Angie’s blue eyes glistened as she nodded and as Oscar leant forward. He pressed a mischievously boyish, wet and noisy kiss to her cheek. 

“Augh!” Angie exclaimed as she fought to push him away and hastily wipe her cheek. “What was that for? I thought you were about to be sentimental, not saliva-mental.”

“That…is for telling my mother that my name is Oscar Stone,” he said seriously, before bursting out laughing at the look on her face. He turned and ran, still clutching his half-full helium balloon. Angie couldn’t make a grab for him; if they wrestled this out she would win, but lucky for him a hot shower was her top priority. 

*

“Do you think we should tell her?” Danni asked as she watched Ellen making her way back down the running track, back towards the bend. A few dog walkers had gone by as they always did, but once again there was no strange man standing and smoking. The path was currently empty as it was now dark, and Ellen was only strolling and humming. The surveillance operation had so far been uneventful and Danni was actually pleased, at least in terms of that night; if something had gone wrong and they hadn’t been able to have the party then many people would have been disappointed. 

“Tell her what?” Peter asked in the communications van beside Danni.

“About the party,” Danni said. “She could go home and quickly change.”

“Then everyone will know that she knew,” Peter said. “Plus, you said she saw the streamers poking out of Oscar’s desk the other day anyway. Trust me, she knows.”

“She doesn’t know it’s tonight.”

“Well her birthday is tomorrow and she knows Oscar is having Angie over for dinner with his folks while we do this again, and we couldn’t do it Friday because Oscar is leaving for the farm and would miss out…and it’s not on Saturday either because Mac has given us all the night off. See where I’m going with this? If she knows about the streamers, and she knows about the party, and she knows how to read a calendar-”

“I get it, I get it, Mac is all-seeing and all-knowing. She knows.”

“She’ll act surprised,” Peter said with a casual shrug. “And I bet she wants to rock up in her daggy running gear anyway, and just have a normal night partying with her friends without trying to dress like the boss or like her true self or whatever-”

“Ooh, how does she dress as her true self?” Danni asked immediately.

“How would I know?” Peter asked in a playful huff. “If it makes you feel better, I reckon she only thinks it’s a birthday party, and not a ten year thing…cos as if us mere mortals would remember a thing like that! And I think that she thinks that not many people will come and it will just be us operatives because of Monday’s news. She has no friggin’ idea how much crap we’ve smuggled into the factory in the last week. It’s a good thing the firearms guys took all our guns on Monday afternoon, because those cabinets were the perfect place to hide all our stuff. It’s awesome.”

“Wanna see a picture?” Danni asked after a beat. 

Her phone had done its little jingle-jangle dance across the counter while Peter was talking and she had opened a message from Angie. She turned her phone towards Peter and showed him the picture of the factory floor, with the caption, ‘Holy crap!!!’ underneath. Peter burst out laughing and had to lean back in his chair for extra air. 

“Mac is going to die!” Danni exclaimed happily. “Oh, this is going to be the best. Did you get her presents? Both of them?”

“Of course I got her presents,” Peter said as he rolled his eyes. “I had one job.”

“Yes, but you haven’t told us what the anniversary present is yet. You just said, ‘Give me your money’. Where are you hiding it anyway?”

“Both gifts are in the boot of my car,” he said. “Wrapped and everything. Well…the birthday present is wrapped properly, thanks to the store we got it from. The other one…I wrapped it myself.”

“Oh Lord,” Danni said under her breath with wide eyes as Peter chuckled and flicked the switch to speak to Ellen. 

“Mac, come in, we’ve lost sight of you.”

“I just left,” Ellen replied after half a second, in which time Peter felt his stomach plummet. “Approaching the car now. Uneventful night.”

“I see her,” Danni said over her shoulder as she climbed back into the driver’s seat. “Crossing the street to her car. Gimme the logbook, we’ll keep it up here I think.”

“We see you Mac,” Peter said. “We’ll follow you back to the factory.”

“Copy that, Peter,” she said. “See you soon.”

“Danni,” Peter said once he had shut everything down and hurried with the logbook to the front seat. They had filled it in for that night, but he put it up front. Danni had started the engine and was preparing to leave as soon as Ellen. “Make sure you are right on her ass into the factory because I don’t want to miss the look on her face.”

“You got it,” Danni assured him. Ahead of them, Ellen had politely indicated and there was a break in the cars and she pulled out as per normal. Danni pulled out right after her, tyres squealing. She chuckled as somebody honked directly behind her. “Suckers,” she said under her breath.

“You are dangerous,” Peter teased softly. “Worse than Ange driving this thing.”

“Well lucky for you, after next week you’ll never have to be in ‘this thing’ with me driving ever again. Feel better?”

“Augh, no,” Peter said as he pouted and sat back in his chair. He hadn’t thought about it like that. No wonder the factory looked so brilliant. This was a farewell party, too.

*

Ellen glared into her rearview mirror at the way the communications van was directly behind her, as she waited for the factory’s garage door to clatter upwards. It was a slow thing, and she knew her birthday party was that night but honestly, did Danni have to be right up against her? There was perhaps an inch between their vehicles. She supposed they were just eager for champagne and party poppers and some retro music playing on Oscar’s computer. It was going to be so nice, it was going to be so-

“What the fuck?” she said under her breath when the roller door lifted above the bottom of her windscreen and she saw balloons. Lots of balloons, and a lot of colour. She wound her front windows down with the push of a button and leant over her steering wheel to watch the factory reveal itself. It was so heavily decorated it was almost unrecognizable, and at least twenty of her staff was all standing around. 

“SURPRISE!” they shouted. 

She really was. 

Ellen parked her car quickly, agape, as the communications van zoomed in right behind her and made a dangerously sharp turn into its parking spot. Ellen took her time and removed the baseball cap from her head and from around her ponytail before she got out of the car. Beside her, Peter had literally leapt from his seat in the communications van and he and Danni were running back to join everyone else. 

Ellen knew she was blushing when she did eventually step out. Her jaw hurt because she was still holding it open, halfway between smiling and stunned. 

“What’s all this?” she asked.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” everyone shouted. “For tomorrow,” a few people chimed, laughing. 

“Wow, um…I’m genuinely surprised,” Ellen said, as her eyes drifted skywards. There weren’t just balloons on the floor and tied to the desks and the landing, but they had been tied to the lights, and the fans, and they were floating on the high ceiling. “Okay, who brought helium?” she asked. “We’ve got no way to get them down-”

“You mean now they took all our guns away?” Oscar asked, semi-seriously to laughs. 

“Mate, we still have handguns…or more sensibly, we can fashion a long stick with a knife on the end,” Peter said. “Beauty! It’s no worries. Come on Mac. Party time!”

“Okay,” she said with a laugh as she properly crossed the floor to approach them. She put her hands on her hips, covered that night by daggy grey tights and a baggy off-the-shoulder sweater that was meant to be a bit come-hither; her dark sports bra strap on show. She knew she wasn’t dressed for a party but everyone else was in casual clothes too, so perhaps tonight she could just be one of the gang again. One last time.

She spent the first twenty minutes greeting her staff and letting people come up to her to say ‘happy birthday’ and to hand over cards and little gift bags and one giant card that everyone had signed, even the contract staff who weren’t able to come. Ellen took a few minutes to read it before they decided to use Angie’s desk as a dumping ground for gifts. This had been planned weeks in advance, Ellen realised, as she watched alcohol and soft drink and chips materialise from between the balloons. 

“Happy birthday!” Angie said when Ellen finally turned her attention to her closest friends and colleagues. Angie hugged Ellen tightly and gave her a long squeeze. “I freaked out when I got back here and saw what Oscar had supervised. Do you like it?”

“I think I need sunglasses, it’s so bright and fun!” Ellen said with a laugh. “Thank you.” She reached out for Oscar and squeezed his hand. “Thank you so much.”

“Well you only turn thirty-seven once,” he said. “It wasn’t meant to get quite this insane…half this stuff only turned up in the last couple of hours, people just brought it. And be careful, some balloons are apparently filled with glitter…I caught the admin crew giggling about it…they won’t tell me which ones.”

“I’ll try not to pop any over my head,” Ellen assured him, before she hugged Danni as well. 

“Glad you like it, Mac,” she said. “Sorry I tailgated. We were both impatient to get here right after you so that we could be a part of it all.”

“It’s fine,” Ellen said vaguely as she continued to look around. Someone had started up music and Oscar was nearby on his phone, ordering a large number of pizzas. 

“Epic, don’t you think?” Peter asked as he walked up to the group with a proud grin on his face. “Our best yet.”

“I can say with certainty that I’ve never had a birthday party like it,” Ellen said. “But you really didn’t need to do this. It’s so…so much.”

“Narr, we don’t tell you how much we appreciate you most of the time,” Danni said as she shrugged and looked around. “This seemed appropriate finally…especially now. We didn’t know about the restructure when we planned this, but I think there are people who decided to get in on the action and make it a nice sort of farewell too.”

“Three weeks early,” Ellen pointed out. She laughed as someone let off a party popper, and while she and Oscar flinched and Peter swiveled on his heels and ducked, someone else shouted, ‘Not in a room full of cops who’ve been shot at, dickhead!’

“Ah well,” Peter said as he threw a casual, friendly arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his side for a brief hug. “We’ll all have a blast for a couple of hours, and when you get to play boss and kick everyone out because of noise restrictions, we’ll kick back with a bottle of champers and give you our presents. Sound good?”

“I better have some sugar then,” Ellen declared as she clapped her hands together. Angie elaborately gestured to the landing like she was advertising a sports car. 

“In the meeting room, you’ll find more lemonade than you could ever dream!”


	12. Chapter 12

TWELVE

“Okay,” Danni said as she dragged a chair through a sea of balloons and streamers to sit beside Oscar and Ellen. “On a scale of one to ten, how drunk are we all?”

“Three?” Oscar asked curiously as he glanced at Ellen, who shrugged and nodded.

“Maybe a two.”

“I feared as much,” Danni said. She sighed as she collapsed onto the chair. “We’ve become old lightweights! Some of those ladies and gents who just left were tanked!”

“Oh yeah, eight or nine, easy,” Oscar said. “But they all walked out on foot to public transport or with designated drivers or for cabs. We all have to drive our cars home.”

“There’s always the overnight room,” Danni said. “We could’ve had a sleepover.”

“There are four beds crammed into that room, and five of us,” Ellen said quickly.

“Ha, yeah, we’d make Church and Stone share, obviously,” Danni told her. They laughed loudly as Ellen watched Angie and Peter having a conversation at his car. She caught herself watching him smile as he leant against the bonnet. He’d obviously only had a couple of drinks as well, like the rest of them it seemed, and Ellen wondered if tonight she could perhaps follow him back to his place for a cuppa and a kiss. Or two.

“Present time!” Angie announced when she returned. “But first, who wants a tea or coffee?”

Danni leant back in her chair and started cackling. 

“I was just thinking about a tea,” Ellen said as she went to stand and help, which made Danni laugh harder. 

“Oh, the end is near!” she exclaimed. “We are officially elite-level nannas and poppies! Who wants just hot water and lemon?”

“I’ll have one!” Peter called innocently from behind the raised boot of his car. 

They scrambled for drinks, and by the time Ellen and Angie returned holding mugs for Peter and themselves, Peter was leaning against the nearest desk with two wrapped gifts beside him. 

“Hot water with lemon, old man,” Angie said seriously as she handed him his drink. “Don’t say we never listen to ya. But did you know that we only have lemon because the drunks we work with brought a bunch to season their drinks, so that’s ironic.”

“I’ll thank them,” Peter said with a chuckle. He looked at Ellen and smiled as she sat down between Oscar and Danni. She took a brief sip before expectantly leaning over to rest her mug safely on the floor just under her chair. Angie also sat and crossed her legs, preferring to hold her cup in her lap. “All settled?” Peter asked them. 

“Let’s get on with it,” Oscar said. 

“Why are there two presents?” Ellen asked. “And why are there any more presents? Didn’t you see Angie’s desk? I got so many cards and gifts, it’s totally unnecessary.”

“They’re spontaneously purchased, ‘thanks for being a great boss, sorry we’re breaking up’ gifts,” Oscar told her. “Vouchers and nail polish and crap. Just enjoy it.”

“O-kay,” Ellen sang happily as she grinned at Peter. “I’m ready.”

“Great,” Danni said as she leapt to her feet and picked up the neatly wrapped square present from beside Peter. 

Beside it was an awkwardly misshapen package, very badly wrapped at odd angles and with sticky-tape wrapped in all directions. Peter was actually a very neat person, he liked clean lines and Danni always thought he was a good wrapper, which meant it was the gift that was weird. Danni still had no clue what it was, and she was sure that Angie had been pestering him only minutes earlier as well, clearly to no avail. 

“Mac, this is for your birthday,” Danni continued as she looked up from the normal-looking present in her hands and into the blue eyes of her boss and friend. “Like I said before, we didn’t actually know the restructure was happening when we planned this, and the gift we picked out ages ago cos we wanted to get you something special from all of us, instead of just the usual card. I don’t remember who suggested this but-”

“Peter!” Oscar said loudly as he fake-coughed into his hand. 

“Oh right,” Danni said with a cheeky laugh. She could feel Peter rolling his eyes and crossing his arms behind her, and in front of her Ellen simply slid her eyes towards Peter and smiled through pursed lips. “Anyway,” Danni said to regain her attention. She held the gift out. “We all think it’s pretty special, and we hope you think so too. Happy thirty-seventh birthday. Thank you for being a constant in our lives and for everything you do that we never see, Detective Senior Sergeant Ellen Mackenzie.”

“Guys, thank you,” Ellen said as she accepted the gift. She held it in her lap, hesitated, then began to unwrap it. It had been professionally wrapped. The purple bow came off first, then the silver paper, and it revealed a dark green square box. She bit her bottom lip as she carefully lifted the lid to look inside. “Oh,” she whispered when she saw the silver charm bracelet. She sat back in her chair and looked at them all, stunned. “Wow, seriously, thank you,” she said. She reached into the box and retrieved the gift to hold it up for closer examination.

“It’s proper silver,” Danni explained. “So you can get it wet and all that. We chose two charms each, they all mean stuff.”

“Okay, tell me,” Ellen said as her eyes filled with tears. She pressed her lips together, smirked in an attempt not to start crying, and stared knowingly at Peter. He simply shrugged and smiled like it was no big deal, but it really was. For birthdays in the team they usually just signed a nice card all together and they bought the person some flowers and massage voucher or movie tickets, or funny ties, and then they ate cake. 

“I picked the dolphin and dove,” Angie said. “For freedom and peace.”

“I picked the book and the cat,” Oscar said. “Cos you’re clever and you’ve mastered that ‘I see what you’re doing, sneaky human’, cat-glare…usually directed at Church!”

Ellen laughed as she grinned at him and nodded. She really had.

“I picked the angel and the watering can,” Peter said. “Cos I reckon we’ve all got a guardian angel, the luck we’ve had in this job over the years, and the watering can for growth, cos getting old’s not as bad as everyone made out when we were young.”

“And I picked the treble clef and the high heel,” Danni said. “So you remember to dance.”

“We literally all stood at the counter for a good hour picking these out,” Oscar added.

“I…have no idea what to say,” Ellen said as a tear slid down her cheek. She turned to Angie and held it out. “Can you put it on?”

Angie handed her cup of tea over to Danni and turned to fix the bracelet on Ellen’s right wrist. Ellen jangled it there briefly and tested that it wouldn’t fall off. It wasn’t too tight either, it was perfect.

“Oh thank Christ it fits,” Danni said under her breath as she mimicked wiping sweat from her brow. “Phew!”

“It’s the most beautiful gift I ever got,” Ellen said quietly as she stared at it and fingered the charms; the dolphin, the book, the shoe, the watering can, the treble clef, the cat, the angel, and the dove. She had gotten expensive gifts from her parents growing up, including the healthy deposit that had allowed her to buy her home, but she had never gotten a gift that meant so much to so many people who wanted it to mean those things for her as well. “I’ll take such good care of it,” she promised them as she looked up. “But it must have been expensive. You guys really didn’t-”

“Stop saying that,” Danni ordered with a challengingly raised brow. Ellen closed her mouth. “Now, uh…there’s another gift here, as you can see…Peter picked it out.”

“Don’t apologise to her in advance!” Peter exclaimed as he laughed. “Give me some credit for knowing this woman. It’s only been ten years.”

“Exactly,” Angie said as she jumped in. She accepted her drink back from Danni before turning towards their curious and shocked boss. “We don’t know if you know this,” she continued. “But you’ve been working here for ten years now-”

“I know,” Ellen said as she nodded, frowning. What did that matter?

“It’s actually ten years next week, and five next month since you took over from Bernie,” Peter said. “So we wanted to make this a dual celebration, a bit of an anniversary as well as your birthday.”

“A birthday is an anniversary,” Oscar said smartly. Peter mock-glared at him.

“But,” Ellen began as she gestured to Peter. “You all should get presents just as nice as this for your time too, and Peter, you’ve been here for years! We never celebrated your ten years here, or even your fifteen years…I don’t even think it was mentioned-”

“People don’t like me as much as they like you,” Peter said. “So anyway, no one knows what it is because it only got finished last week and that’s why they’re all looking at it like you’re about to unwrap a tennis ball-”

“I’m sorry, but that is not a tennis ball,” Angie pointed out as she pointed at the object. “He said he was going to do something with tin because tin is traditionally for ten year anniversaries. He said he was going to make it-”

“I said ‘have it made’.”

“Just give it to me already!” Ellen said with a laugh as they started bickering. 

“Here you go,” Peter said softly as he handed Ellen the present with two hands. Her tea forgotten, Ellen laid it on her lap. 

“It’s pretty heavy for tin?” she asked curiously. “And very expertly wrapped!”

“I thought so,” Peter said with an agreeable nod. “And it’s not tin, it’s tin interpreted.”

“Oh God,” Danni said as she covered her face with one of her hands. “I can’t watch.”

“This is hilarious,” Ellen said, laughing as Angie and Oscar pushed their chairs back an inch for effect and stared warily at the package. “I might just sit here with it on my lap and not unwrap it, to continue watching you all pull faces, what do you think?”

“No, no, you can unwrap it,” Angie said. “I’m sure it’s fine. But also, we’re sorry.”

“Hey!” Peter said. “I’m starting to think you’re all really serious. I didn’t just pick it up at Bunnings, it’s special!”

“Really?” Ellen asked even though she had heard him before as well. Peter nodded and Ellen looked down. She felt her ponytail slide forwards over her shoulder as she leant over to examine the best way to tear the paper around all of the sticky tape.

“It’s tied tight cos it’s so heavy I was afraid of it ripping the paper,” Peter mumbled. 

“No, it’s okay,” Ellen assured him when she found a weak spot. “This will be fun!” She dug her nail and ripped at the paper, counted to three, and then tore around the sticky tape with as much strength as she dared, bending the paper around the uneven edges of the present to slide it from its wrapping. “Ahah!” she declared once done.

It was a silver sculpture of two figures joined on a platform. Ellen had never seen anything like it before, but she immediately recognised the figures and looked up at him curiously. It was Tin Man and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, a movie that Ellen had watched repeatedly as a little girl but she had not seen in years. When had she told Peter that it had been a favourite? She had no memory of telling him that. 

In the sculpture, the Tin Man was standing up straight in his pointed hat and suit of armour, holding his axe and staring straight ahead. Dorothy was to his right, the shorter figure in the sculpture. She was peering around and up at him with a hand stretched out towards his torso, her fingers lifted forever in mid-air towards his heart. Ellen thought perhaps it was from the part of the movie where Dorothy first stumbles upon the Tin Man rusted in the forest. The wonder in the figure’s face and posture was clear, and the only difference was in the girl’s hair. The figure’s hair was not in Dorothy’s famous pigtails, but was tied back in a thick braid by a delicate ribbon of silver. It allowed the face to be seen well. The dress, too, was different, a cap-sleeved version with a skirt that looked more like a long dancer’s skirt; it meant that no puffy sleeves could distract from the way the girl’s arm was reaching out to the Tin Man.

“Is that the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz?” Oscar asked as he and Angie leant forwards. They had shuffled their chairs back to where they had started. Ellen held it up so that they could get a better look, but her gaze was squarely fixed on Peter. His hopeful light blue eyes were shimmering and he was biting his bottom lip. Danni left his side to lean over between Angie and Ellen’s chair so that she could look at it too.

“Peter,” Angie said finally. “It’s beautiful. You had it made?”

“Yeah, an old mate of mine is a silversmith artist, and I’ve been thinking Mac needs some more art in her life. Anyway, this guy, we went to school together, played footy, went for the odd surf on the summer holidays. We don’t keep in touch as adults, cos of the job, but I never forgot his name or what he did. So I had this idea and had a still from the movie to show him, and I gave him a call out of the blue and he said he’d do it, mate’s rates. What do you think?” he asked, staring at Ellen. Her mouth was open as she looked at him but no words were coming out, so he continued. “You said it was a favourite movie as a kid, and y’see, we were trying to think of something we could get you that would be like, a symbol of your time here, that was also tin. We couldn’t think of anything we all agreed on, so I called shotgun and said I’d take care of it.”

“What does it mean?” Oscar asked. “I know what we talked about but I don’t get it.”

“Oh, simple,” Peter said. “The Tin Man thought he had no heart, right? So Mac, it means that we know that you sometimes feel like you have to be heartless to survive in the job, or like you have to put your heart to one side for a while, because we all do that, especially on the really tough cases and the really hard days. But we want you to know that for the last ten years solid you have actually been the heart of this place. We wouldn’t be as good as we are without you. You keep us going, you keep us alive, and we, in turn, are always gonna be around if you need us. Ten years, good job, here ends my little speech. Enjoy! And the rest of you can apologise to me later.”

“Peter,” Ellen whispered. She handed the sculpture to Oscar and stood. She bit her bottom lip briefly, before crossing the few steps she needed to cover before she could hug him. She wrapped her arms tightly around his shoulders and buried her face in his neck, as his arms wound around her waist and back. She loved that they were basically the same height; it was so easy to hug him, it felt comfortable and normal.

She wept silently into his neck as Peter lifted one of his hands to gently cover her neck, giving her even more privacy from the others. Ellen was completely still and silent, however, and their friends were only half watching the embrace, still too busy examining the gift they had all been teasing him about and bitching about for days. 

“It really is beautiful,” Danni explained as she took a turn holding the sculpture and examining it from every angle. “I’d have something like this in my home, look at the detail! But at the same time…not too much detail. It’s perfect.”

“It is, it’s perfect,” Ellen said as she lifted her head and stared into Peter’s cloudy, damp eyes. He settled his hands loosely on her hips and nodded, suddenly too emotional to speak himself. He wanted to wipe the tear-tracks from her face but she stopped him. She held his warm, square jaw in both her hands and moved her thumbs across his cheeks. “Sweetheart-” she began, before she offered him a watery smile full of affection, and then she shut her eyes and leant forward to touch her lips to his. 

It was a lingering, chaste kiss, but Peter’s hands still tightened on Ellen’s hips and it made her want to step into him, to fall against him just like she had many times before, but better than that too. However, she resisted, they parted, and Peter took the opportunity to lovingly brush the backs of his fingers across her cheeks one by one. 

“It’s what we all wanted you to know,” he said. “Everyone chipped in, not just me.”

“I know,” Ellen said. She bit her bottom lip, suddenly shy, as she ducked her head and blushed. Yet before she pulled away she leant in one more time for a second kiss. It was again more friendly than passionate, but full of future promises only they understood. Peter kissed her, and he didn’t let her go again without a third quick peck. 

Oscar finally and cheekily whistled, which meant that Ellen stepped away quickly and laughed. She waved her hand about, as though to silently say that she had just been saying thank you and it was no big deal among friends. To prove that to the rest of them, she hugged Oscar next, and kissed his cheek twice. Angie and Danni were next. 

“Thank you for the sentiment,” she told them. “And we should confess, by the time you were probably discussing this I’d given Peter an idea about what might happen here, to us and this place…I was vague, but he knew we’d lost significant funding, he knew that we might not be working together this time next year. So that gift idea-”

“It’s okay Mac,” Danni said gently as she squeezed Ellen’s hand. She looked her straight in the eyes and wisely smiled. “We get it. This all has extra meaning now, for all of us, and that’s really cool and we’re all emotional and on edge. But before we were that, we also wanted you to have something special, and there was no one better to think this up. We all know that Peter’s more clever than he lets on, and not as tough as he looks.” She leant around Ellen and added, “Sorry we gave you crap, Peter.”

“You’re forgiven,” he said with a sage nod. “Now, who wants another tea?”


	13. Chapter 13

THIRTEEN

Ellen arrived at work early the next day and was surprised to see Angie’s car in its usual spot, and Angie sitting at her desk typing. A frown knotted on Ellen’s brow as she looked around. She could see the concrete floor, and the desktops, and while there were still balloons bouncing around the ceiling and streamers tied to the industrial-sized fans, the majority of the central part of the factory had been cleaned up. It had not been that clean when Ellen had left the previous night. Had they all stayed back?

She collected her briefcase from her back seat, locked her car, and then walked over, all with her eyes fixed on her glum-looking friend. 

“Morning Ange,” she said, half-smiling curiously as Angie looked over and managed a tight smile. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah,” Angie said, returning her eyes to her screen. She sighed when Ellen reached for Danni’s desk chair and wheeled it around on the concrete floor to sit beside her. 

“Talk.”

“I had a call yesterday evening,” Angie said as she looked into Ellen’s eyes. “I missed it, because of the op, and the party. I didn’t check my voicemail until I got home-”

“What’s happened?” Ellen asked worriedly.

“Oh, no, it’s nothing bad,” Angie said. She laughed at herself and shook her head. “I had a call from Reg Masters, Inspector Masters. He uh, he wants me to come in for a chat about the Special Response to Drug Crimes Taskforce. I have to call him back…he wanted to meet today or tomorrow. Have you heard?”

“All I know is that they’re only interviewing people that they like,” Ellen said. Her smile was kind. “I am not surprised,” she added. “Why the glum face?”

“I don’t know. I just assumed they wouldn’t be interested in me…I guess I didn’t want to get my hopes up, and I’d already started picturing, well, something else.”

“Can I ask what?” 

“Oh,” Angie said as she blushed and looked back at her computer screen. “I was thinking I’d probably end up back in uniform in the suburbs. It seems an all right life to me. If the Taskforce are thinking about me, it would be as an operative, right?”

“Potentially,” Ellen said, nodding. “Angie, you’re an excellent operative.”

“Yeah,” Angie said. She licked her lips and sat back in her chair. “But, can I ask you something? Since it’s…oh my God, it’s your birthday today, I just remembered! Happy birthday!”

Ellen laughed and leant one arm on Angie’s desk as she gestured around them. 

“I can see how you might have forgotten. What happened to my streamers?”

“Oscar, Peter and I stayed back last night after you and Danni left.”

“You did not have to do that, but what do you want to ask me? Fire away.”

“Do you still consider yourself an undercover cop?” Angie asked. “I mean, with everything else that you do, you’ve only gone undercover a handful of times in five years, and hardly at all in this last year. But do you still see yourself that way?”

“I do,” Ellen admitted softly as she stared Angie in the eyes. “I think of myself as an undercover cop every day because I love it, and I carry the memories of it with me…and some of the scars. It is burned deep into my soul, it will never go away.”

“The thing is,” Angie said. “In the meeting on Monday when you said we should start thinking about where we see ourselves in five or ten years, and you told us we were free…it’s not that I want to be free, Mac, but I don’t think I want to be an undercover cop when I’m Pete’s age. I mean in ten years or so when you’re about his age…would you still want to be going undercover? Honestly?”

“I barely go undercover now.”

“You know what I mean,” Angie said seriously. “I just feel like there’s a time limit on this…like no one needs or wants a fifty year old female undercover cop, not in the way that we’ve been able to be in and out on so many different jobs over the years.”

“I guess that’s true,” Ellen said. “I think in ten years I will still have the urge, if I’m involved in an investigation and I can see that someone like me could be effective…I would still volunteer. I’d hope that I could be taken seriously.”

“Of course you would, and you would smash it,” Angie assured her. “I’ve always been in awe of you, you know…have you been offered a spot on the Taskforce yet?”

“Yes I have,” Ellen said. “But Angie, you don’t give yourself enough credit-”

“I know I’m good,” Angie said. “My solve rate is great, I’ve not gotten in over my head too many times, I still have my head, but I’m just not next level. And I want…I want a family, Mac. When I started in this unit I was all ‘yeah whatever’ about it, and I gave Oscar crap for saying he wanted a house, three kids and a dog, but I dunno…it sounds kind of nice now. It wouldn’t happen in the Taskforce, would it?”

“It wouldn’t necessarily be harder than it is now,” Ellen said thoughtfully. “It’s safe to assume it wouldn’t be easier than it is now. Are you seeing anyone at the moment?”

“No, unless you count Oscar’s mother,” Angie said, suddenly laughing. 

“And Oscar?” Ellen asked, raising a perceptive eyebrow as she stared Angie down.

“Uh, I dunno,” Angie said with a dismissive shrug. “I don’t know who I would be if I was with him.”

“You’d be Angie,” Ellen suggested obviously. 

“You know what I mean, Mac,” Angie said just as plainly. “We’re all terrific friends and we’d probably jump in front of a bullet for each other, but we all know each other’s work selves much better than our away-from-work selves.”

“I understand that,” Ellen said as she picked up her briefcase and stood. She had a nine-thirty call to make and wanted to be prepared. “But remember, you’re talking about wanting a family too…that’s going to involve the ‘real’ you, whoever you see that as being, whether it’s with Oscar or someone else, or perhaps you’ll decide to do it on your own, who knows? So you should meet with Reg, and then you should take a few days and decide to do whatever feels the most right in the moment.”

“What about you?” Angie asked before Ellen could get very far. “The Taskforce?”

“I turned him down the first time,” Ellen said without turning back to Angie. She climbed the nearby stairs slowly, one at a time. “But I had a message from him last night again, and I called him back when I got home – because I’m a DSS and we go way back so I can piss him off like that – I told him, if he was that desperate I would think about it. We’ll see. But thank you Angie, for reminding me that I love my job.”

“It’s easy to forget some days,” Angie agreed with a chuckle. “Thanks for being no help at all with my own problem.”

“You are welcome,” Ellen said. She smirked affectionately over her shoulder in Angie’s direction before pushing the door to her office open and shutting herself inside. Her invitation-only boss’ office had thankfully escaped the party-related decorating of the previous day, and Ellen took a seat and switched on her computer. 

At twenty-nine minutes past nine, her phone rang and she picked it up on the second ring. Outside, she heard the roller door chugging up, announcing another arrival. 

“Mackenzie.”

“It’s Jeff,” the Sex Crimes Inspector said over the phone.

“I got your message,” she said quickly. “I did turn my phone off last night, it didn’t go on again until I got up today, I’m sorry, we had a work function. How is she?”

“They don’t think she’ll live,” Jeff said. “It happened this morning, around five-thirty. It’s already broken in the press but when I didn’t hear from you by seven-thirty I figured you hadn’t heard and I should call-”

“My team works late starts,” Ellen reminded him, even though he already knew. “And across town, you said?”

“Almost, yeah. I’d say it’s the same guy. Different running track, same M.O. He grabbed her from behind while she was running with her headphones blaring, she didn’t hear him coming, no obvious signs of sexual assault, but he smashed her head in with a rock he left behind, and he broke her neck.”

“Jesus,” Ellen said on a gasp as she leant forward against her desk and briefly covered her mouth with her free hand. Her blue eyes were wide as her mind raced. “Have you got an ID?” 

“Yeah, couple hours ago. Her mum called her local cops and said it was unusual that her daughter had been gone for nearly three hours on what was usually a one-hour run, and could they help? Mum has epilepsy so doesn’t have a licence; she couldn’t get in the daughter’s new L-plated car to search. She knew the route though, and the girl had been found by other runners and taken to hospital by then. They took mum there straight away. Her name’s Kiera Rudonikis, and she’s seventeen years old.”

“She’s a schoolgirl?”

“Yep,” Jeffrey said. He sighed. “And this park where she was bashed, there aren’t any surveillance cameras – it’s just a simple park in the middle of the suburbs – and no one we’ve spoken to so far has seen anything. We’ve got an appeal out for anyone who was running or who was out and about in the area at the time, and we’ll keep playing that in the media to encourage people to come forward, but-”

“This guy’s an expert now,” Ellen said. “Or he thinks he is. He’s quick too, but this seems more opportunistic, a different location, all of a sudden-”

“You and your lot haven’t been made?”

“No,” she said on a brief laugh. “Not that I know of, anyway, but you’d have to be pretty dim not to cotton onto the fact that the cops would be watching the spot where you assaulted five women. He’s never used a rock before.”

“It was there. We don’t know if he meant to break her neck and if he’s escalating, or if that part was more accidental; awkward fall or she was fighting back and he came down on her and just ‘oops’, you know?”

“Mm,” Ellen said softly. “First attack early in the morning?”

“Yeah,” Jeffrey said. “I’m positive it’s the same guy though Ellen. I just thought you should know.”

“What do you want us to do?” she asked. “We’ve got the surveillance op booked in every night until next Friday except for this Saturday – some of my staff have pre-arranged leave this weekend and as you know we have just a bit to deal with here.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Jeffrey said with a chuckle. “You packing up?”

“Slowly.”

“Where are you moving to?”

“That is the million dollar question,” Ellen said on a sigh. “But I think a holiday might be in order first. Beaches, sunshine, sleep-ins, the usual dream-”

“I hear ya, but keep me posted, because my Chief Inspector would make you an offer in a heartbeat. As for your op, we’re keeping it going. This new park is more open, it’s a different landscape-”

“It could be near where he lives,” Ellen said. “You could doorknock?”

“That’s part of today’s plan, but it’s densely populated so drawing even a two kilometre radius around the park and sending cops out on foot is going to take days. We’ll do what we can and see if anyone saw or heard anything. You know how successful that usually is!”

“Mm, I don’t’ miss it. Good luck.”

“Do you want extra backup for the op?”

“No, we’re fine Jeff,” Ellen said with a smile. “I’ve got two of my best operatives with me tonight and we’ve got surveillance along the track covered. It will just be me, Piper’s on a night off, so your guys would literally only be there for half an hour.”

“Right, well I’ll keep you posted. This poor kid is barely hanging on and this is the sixth assault in three months, this is murder now. We really need this guy, Ellen.”

“He’ll make a mistake,” she assured him. “They always do.”

*

“Dead?” Danni asked two hours later once everyone had arrived. Ellen had called them all into her office to break the news. Danni and Oscar were standing, Angie and Peter sitting on her couch, as Ellen leant against the front edge of her desk. 

“Unfortunately. She passed away thirty minutes ago.”

“Is the op still on tonight?” Peter asked. 

“Yes. There’s still no reason to assume that this person has ditched his favourite park completely. The operation is running as scheduled until next week, unless the police make an arrest. I just wanted you to know that this has now escalated, it’s likely Homicide will be working with Sex Crimes as well as us from hereon in.”

“For a police force trying to shut us down, they sure do rely on us,” Oscar said with a smug smirk. “Mac, are you sure it’s still cool that Ange and I have the night off? I could even still cancel my leave, I can get the neighbours to feed the stock-”

“Don’t be silly, go,” Ellen said with a smile. “All right, that’s it then.” 

They all went to move, but she called Peter back. He shut the door behind Angie who was the last of the three to leave, and then went back to sit on the couch. He gestured for Ellen to join him. She walked first to the window just above the couch, that looked out onto the landing and below, and she shut the blinds. 

“Nice bracelet,” Peter said to her as she sat down and he reached for her hand. They laced their fingers together and Ellen smiled proudly as she looked at the silver charm bracelet still secured around her right wrist, attached to the palm pressed against his. 

“Thanks,” she said. “My friends gave it to me. Now, I’m sorry, I wanted to see you in private last night but it was late and I was tired-”

“No worries Mac,” he assured her gently. “Did you find a home for your art?”

“For now,” she replied coyly. “It’s on my bedside table. I love it, thank you. And thank you for not arranging for everyone to get me a tennis ball made of tin!”

“That was my Plan B,” Peter said as they laughed about the previous night’s joke. 

“I also had a call last night from Reg,” she continued more seriously. “He repeated his offer for a spot on the Taskforce-”

“He called me and Danni last night too,” Peter said. “We both had messages. I dunno about Ange and Stone, and I haven’t called him back yet. What did you say?”

“I agreed to think about it…while I take some much-needed long service leave over the next few months with ‘my partner’ who I did not name. He said that he understood, and to let him know when I’m due to return so they can reassess around that time, and see if they still need me. So, now that Reg is satisfied that I haven’t given him an outright no like I did the first time, and now that I am sufficiently confused about where I want to be in ten years’ time thanks to a conversation with Ange this morning, you and I are going on holidays in three weeks. That’s an order.”

“Excellent,” Peter said with a grin. “Beach? Sunshine? A North Queensland winter?”

“Exactly,” she said, nodding. “I want to wear a bathing suit and a sarong and a big floppy hat, and I want to chill the fuck out, frankly.” She smirked as Peter grinned and nodded. “I also want us to just be in one place, together,” she added more gently. “I didn’t get much sleep last night after talking to Reg. Work will always be important to me and I do love this job, but I’m so burnt out that I felt sick all night for just telling him I would think about it, like I was afraid that I might eventually accept. I was so anxious I thought I might prefer to just sell up and run away, and that scared me. I know that’s not me thinking straight, so I need to go away for a while now. Peace and quiet, no phones…and I want to be with you, in our own space, while I recharge.”

Peter brushed his fingers around her hairline, from her temple to behind her ear, as he nodded and smiled with his lips pressed together and accepting tears in his eyes. 

“That’s all I want too, Elle,” he said. “Don’t, don’t run. I’ll tell Reg the same thing; that I’ll get back to him after a long holiday, cos I earned it, and cos I gotta talk it over with the woman I’m with, cos she’s my best mate and I won’t risk either of us cracking up. We’ll see how long it takes the nosy little Ferret to figure us out, eh?”


	14. Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

“How was your interview with Reg today?” Peter asked when Danni joined him in the back of the communications van that evening. He turned on the video screens and began monitoring the cameras as each flickered to life, revealing the park and the running track. It was dusk, and outside it was cold and windy, but still about a dozen people were visible, all with dogs or in groups, squeezing in their evening exercise between work and dinner. “Nothing suspicious yet,” Peter said under his breath.

“It was good,” Danni answered. “More like a chat. Mac told me you know that she-”

“Put in a good word for you,” Peter assured her with a friendly nod. “And?”

“Oh, well Reg introduced me to detectives from Drug Squad, nice guys…I would do my training under them, or in their team, which will be focused on heroin, and that makes sense since you and I, our team, we’ve dealt mostly with coke and smack-”

“So you’ll be part of the Smack Squad?” Peter asked, teasing her and laughing.

“Reg offered me a spot on the Taskforce here in the CBD, in HQ. I would make Detective, help run investigations, conduct interviews, put cases together, all focused on heroin dealing, trafficking, possession, importation, etcetera, etcetera.” 

“And you’re not sure whether to accept?”

“Reg said he wants as many of our team on the Taskforce as he can get because he knows we’re good, but that I should think about it. I’m having lunch with Mac and the Head of Homicide tomorrow-”

“Neil Underwood, he’s a good guy, Mac gets on with him, and Hell even I like him,” Peter said. “If you got offered both, what would you take?”

“Homicide,” Danni said softly. “That was always the ten year plan when I joined the cops…and it hasn’t been that long but I’m older than the average cop who’s been in the job ten years, and if the opportunity comes up now I’m going to take it.”

“You’d be a friggin’ awesome Homicide Detective,” Peter said in earnest. “Reg is gonna freak if you get poached by Homicide, but you see what Mac did there, right?”

“What, you mean she recommended me to the Taskforce to boost my profile at HQ so that the recommendation could accidentally also fall into the lap of her mates over in Homicide, which is where she knew I really wanted to end up thanks to my last few performance reviews?” Danni suggested simply, her dark blonde eyebrows raised. 

“See,” Peter said. “It’d take a person thinking like a sly Detective to figure that out.” He flicked the switch in front of him and leant forwards. “Mac, we’re ready to go here when you are.”

“Copy that, heading in now,” Ellen said. 

“Did you talk to Stoney, Dan?” Peter asked once he sat back and watched for the moment when Ellen would appear on the bottom corner of surveillance upon entering the park and the secluded running track. “I tried to get him to talk when he got back from HQ, before he took off home mid-arvo, but he was pretty tight-lipped.”

“Based on what Reg told me about wanting all of us, I’m sure an offer was made. Angie’s going in tomorrow morning. How about you?”

“We talked on the phone.”

“And?” Danni asked eagerly as she watched Ellen walking. Ellen had stopped even trying to jog most nights and Danni knew it was because she was worn out mentally and that was affecting her physically, but it didn’t matter since she wasn’t meant to be the epitome of speed and energy on this case anyway. She looked as daggy and normal as ever, and Danni suspected that an evening walk through what was actually very nice parkland was actually very relaxing for her. 

“And,” Peter continued. “He wants me in as a Sergeant on the Smack Squad too, on the proviso I pass my Sergeant’s exam.”

“No way!” Danni said as she looked at him with an open-mouthed grin. “We’d be buddies? Would you be operational?”

“No. My choice. I said if I accepted I didn’t want to be going undercover; I made it this far and now I’d like to stay alive as long as possible. Reg said that’s fine, he knows I’ve done my bit – probably because Mac’s been in his ear about us all – because he then said I could really be a help to the new guys, a mentor, or whatever.”

“Well you could. You said it yourself on Monday. Did you accept?”

“Not yet. I’d still have to put on a uniform again every day and I need to really think about that!” he said, laughing. Danni chuckled before Peter grew more serious and cautiously announced, “I’m gonna take some leave first, Danni. After the unit closes officially in a few weeks, I’m taking off for a while. Holiday time.”

“That’s cool,” she said softly. She gestured to the screen in front of them and they both stopped talking, because Ellen was approaching her smoker-friend. “He’s ba-ack,” Danni whispered playfully.

*

Ellen was not surprised to see the young blonde man puffing away in the middle of the bend. He seemed to show up every couple of days, and she wondered if he had a job that kept him away on the other evenings. She kept walking in his direction.

“Evening,” she said in her relaxed, happy Leanne voice. “I feel like I should know your name so I can say hello properly. This is becoming a habit.”

“Ah, it’s Ben,” he said. 

“Well I’m Leanne. Bit windy tonight!”

“Yeah, least it’s not raining,” he said with a shrug as she began to walk on. “See ya Leanne.”

“Have a good night Ben,” she replied over her shoulder. She crossed the bend and waited until she was well out of sight to speak under her breath for the benefit of her backup. “He seems calm,” she said. “Steady hands.”

“Copy that Mac,” Danni chirped in her ear. “He’s stationary. Keep your pace.”

“Well there’s no risk of me going faster,” Ellen said under her breath in a playful huff as she walked towards the open space of the park and the exercise equipment she had spoken to Angie near the other evening. She wondered how dinner with Oscar’s parents was going. 

Ellen knew that the two of them liked to joke around about the whole Michelle fiasco of many years ago, but Angie’s affection for that family was very real, as was her very well guarded affection for Oscar. Yet Ellen was absolutely certain that nothing had ever happened between them. Perhaps a kiss, that was all. Neither of them had crossed the same line that she and Peter had crossed very eagerly, physically, and thoughtlessly eight years earlier, back when Ellen had still been in the process of hiring Angie and Oscar. They had struck her as alike then and they still did, they got on together, they fit into her team well together, but the truth was that they weren’t going to be a team like that again, not with Oscar leaving for two weeks only to return for the final pack-up. This dinner was, effectively, Oscar and Angie saying goodbye to all of that, and to the way they had known each other amidst all of that, for years. 

Ellen wondered if she would ever see them again, and it was a question she didn’t really know how to answer, unsure of her own future and of theirs. A lot could change for Angie, Oscar and Danni in the two months she and Peter planned to be away, or at least planned to be preoccupied with other things like finding Peter a new house to live in. He had already received an offer that afternoon, but there was now also an open home scheduled for Saturday and he wanted that to go ahead, to see if he could bump the price up with some extra interest. 

What if, after those two months, they all stayed cops and she didn’t? It was very unlikely that she would see them again, or maybe they would catch up once or twice, but then they would soon get busy with shiftwork and long hours and serious investigations; they would lose touch with Ellen, as friends sometimes did. Even if she and Peter did go back to the job, and she occasionally worked with Danni or Oscar or Angie, it wouldn’t be in the same context. It wasn’t going to be the same relationship. Ellen knew that she had wasted the last few years, buried in work, trying to hold them all together amid changing policies and dwindling budgets, but at the same time sacrificing a lot of hours she could have spent just enjoying the job and the people she was privileged and proud to work with. She was remembering too late.

She sighed deeply as she put her hands on her hips and stared at the tree that marked the halfway point. 

“You okay, birthday girl?” Danni asked. They could hear her, of course. They could hear everything but her own melancholy thoughts.

“Fine,” she said. “The park’s emptied out except for some PT going on near the soccer nets across the oval, and the wind’s picked up. I’m heading back.”

“Copy that. Smokey’s on his way out.”

Ellen chuckled and turned around. Before she set off again she did some stretches and had a good look around the park. Strategically placed lights lit up patches of grass and nearby trees, but the brightest lights were coming from the soccer field. The only sounds she could hear was the sound of the personal trainer coaching his few clients, nearby traffic driving along the surrounding streets, and the wind loudly rattling the branches around her. There was no one left in her quadrant of the park, and with the deteriorating weather and the awful death of Kiera after the morning’s attack, Ellen felt like she could leave the area under the safe guardianship of the night ahead. 

After all, she reasoned as she began to walk back down the track, the main purpose of this operation wasn’t to try to catch the guy – that would be a great bonus for her team if it happened – but to be an observant presence in the park at a time when the public didn’t feel wholly safe. People had a right to feel safe, women had a right to go for a run after work wherever they liked, alone; God only knew most of them probably never got much time alone between work and family life. They shouldn’t be scared.

“Anything on the bend?” she asked the duo in her ear as she headed back out of sight of the main oval, and into the running track.

“Negative,” Peter answered. “All cameras are clear, we’ve got you on number three.”

“Thanks,” Ellen said. She held her hands out at her sides, palms upwards, when she felt the first few drops of cold rain on her back. It was so windy that the rain would quickly blow over, but it was still not welcome. She groaned and started a light jog. She did not want a repeat of that first night on duty when she and Angie had been left shivering and drenched. 

At the bend, she did what she usually did which was to slow to a walk as though she was puffed, and to pay more attention to the scrub and the sounds around her, without making it look as though that was what she was doing. That night, she sighed and leant down to untie and retie one of her shoelaces, but as usual nothing happened and there was no one else there to see or hear. 

“And I’m out,” she announced under her breath as she quickly reached the end of the path and exited the park. She turned to walk along the footpath in the direction of her car, and waited for a chance to safely jog across the street. 

“Copy that Mac,” Peter answered as Ellen crossed. “That’s it for tonight.”

“Yep, see you back at the factory,” she said. She soon reached her car and fiddled with the zip to the pocket on the side of her tights, where her car key was stashed. 

A sudden grip on her ponytail pulled her off her feet before she had a chance to open the door. Ellen gasped and spun around in a defensive block when the hand let go of her hair, but she didn’t see the large hand ready to wrap around her jaw before it was right in her face. The palm was plastered over her mouth and his fingers dug into her cheeks, and with what seemed to Ellen in the second it happened like a simple flick of his wrist, her head was pushed down and back, against the bottom edge of the driver’s side window. It was enough to stun her, but it allowed her to get closer to the ground to try to sweep his legs out from beneath him without losing her balance. He stumbled and she turned onto her hands and knees to leap to her feet. 

Something came down hard on her back, a foot or an elbow, and it knocked the air out of her lungs. She gasped loudly, as loudly as she could, given that she could barely breathe and she certainly couldn’t speak. Two hands came around her head and tried to lift it up and smash it forehead-first into the concrete path right by the curb and right beside her car, but Ellen was able to get a hand between her forehead and the ground in the fraction of the second she had in which to act. She found her breath and her voice with that stroke of genius luck, and called, “Peter!” loudly, but she had no idea if they had already turned off her earpiece. 

They could still be sitting in the back of the van. It had only been seconds. They would notice something was wrong when they got into their seats in the front and waited for her to leave and she didn’t, but they wouldn’t be able to see that she wasn’t in the car, and they wouldn’t be able to see that she was beside the car; they could barely see the car itself with all the cars parked between them down the long street.

The man on top of her – a tall man, she thought – had gotten tired of trying to knock her face into the ground and he yanked her neck straight back by her ponytail. Ellen tried to turn over, at the same time knowing that this was what Kiera had done, this was the progression, and this was how her neck broke. Yet Ellen was only partly aware of that truth and it didn’t change her actions. Instinctively she tried to swing her body around to get back on her feet, while he simultaneously grabbed her head in both hands, turned it towards him, and slammed it backwards into the path. She couldn’t get her hand behind her in time. She couldn’t remember what happened next.

* 

“Last camera is off and we are good to go,” Peter said as he climbed into the front passenger seat. Danni was at the wheel but she wasn’t looking at traffic in her usually keen-to-get-driving kind of way. “What’s up?”

“Did we miss her?” she asked. “I swear I saw her crossing the street, and I looked down to fill in the logbook, and I look up expecting to see her pulling out but her car hasn’t moved. That’s her car, right?” she asked. She pointed ahead, to where the road curved around and they could just make out Ellen’s familiar sedan.

“That’s it,” Peter said. “She might be faffing about, hang on-” He stood up and moved back into the communications van to reactivate her earpiece. He had only just turned it off, barely a minute earlier. “Mac, you okay?” he asked, leaving the line open. Danni turned around to watch him as Ellen failed to answer, and he picked up the radio and tried to contact her inside the car. “Mac, do you copy?” Nothing.

“I’m going to check it out,” Danni said quickly as she undid her seatbelt and removed the gun from its holder, which had been in her bag as always. Just in case. 

“Ellen, do you copy,” Peter said again into the earpiece. She always responded to that car radio if it was within reach, and she never would have taken her earpiece out so early; she only ever took it out back at the factory because of the way it was taped in. 

Peter shook his head and gestured for Danni to go. His eyes told her to go quickly but to stay calm, and she nodded and opened the driver’s door to jump out and onto the street. Peter picked up the dispatch radio and climbed through the cabin to follow her. He grabbed the keys out of the ignition on the way out and locked the van. He looked up just in time to see Danni a few metres ahead of him jogging at an eager but casual pace. It was windy, cold and it was raining; the light squall obscured their view.

Quickly, a tall man in a black jacket stood up in the darkness from between two cars several metres ahead of Ellen’s car. He ran, and he ran fast. It didn’t matter that he seemed further away; Peter knew he could have scurried to that point. Peter’s stomach took a dive when he saw Danni hesitate in the rain. She had seen the man appear and run away, and it had momentarily distracted them both from their approaching view of the footpath near Ellen’s car, and the shadow her car cast onto the path beside it.

“Church!” Danni said as she broke into a sprint. Peter was only a few metres behind her as she skidded to a stop, and he was on the radio calling dispatch for an ambulance and backup when Danni dropped to her knees beside Ellen’s limp body. 

“Mac,” Danni said as she held her hands over her boss, unsure of where to touch her or how. “She’s unconscious,” Danni called back to Peter. “She’s breathing.”

She touched the top of Ellen’s head, and the straight brown hair that had been pulled back in a ponytail but that was now tossed over one of her shoulders. Her eyes were closed and her face was turned straight up into the light rain, which she did not respond to. Blood had trickled from between her lips but was being diluted by the drops of cold rain. Danni took a deep breath, and rested her fingers against Ellen’s neck. Her pulse was fast and shallow but steady, just like her breathing. Danni told herself that this was a good thing, but she still moved to position herself at the top of Ellen’s head, facing her, so that she could safely shield her face from the rain with her torso, and so that she could hold Ellen’s head to stop it moving. Just in case. 

“Ambulance ETA three minutes,” dispatch crackled back to Peter over the phone. 

He was trembling when he lowered the radio and found Danni looking up into his eyes. Her lips were pressed together in a grimace; her eyes were wide and pleading.

“Pete, you take over,” she said. “You go with her. I’ll stay and do a hand-over.”

“No, Danni, I can’t, I just-” He felt breathless and sick. Ellen wasn’t moving.

“I know you love her,” Danni said firmly. “Take over from me, I don’t want to accidentally move her neck. She’s safer in your hands than mine. Please.”


	15. Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

Angie laughed as Oscar popped a champagne cork over his kitchen sink. He had really outdone himself on dinner. The lamb roast was resting on the bench, the roast vegetables were browning in the oven, and the gravy was on the boil. 

“I don’t know what the big fuss is,” Charlie said as he sat on the nearby living room couch and watched on. 

“A two week holiday?” Oscar asked. “Trust me dad, that is definitely champagne-worthy. Maybe I’m not getting married or doing anything more exciting than taking a break from the city, but that is worth celebrating in my books.”

“A two week holiday is always worth enjoying,” Angie said as she leant over the kitchen bench. “What are you going to do first?”

“Go horse-riding,” he said with a grin. 

“You will not!” Charlie said in a huff. “You said you were going up there to work, remember.”

“And I will, but I wanna say hi to the animals first,” Oscar replied, laughing happily. “Angie agrees with me, right Ange? You love horses.”

“I do, I’m jealous. You didn’t have horses when I was there last!”

“Well they’ve got two now,” Oscar explained. “Mum always loved to ride and we had ‘em as kids, she really missed it, and she’s had Fleur and Benson for a couple of years. If you visit, you can ride one,” he added, wiggling his brown eyebrows.

“Bribery,” Angie said with a snort. “That won’t get you far.”

“Yes it will,” he quipped. “Come on mum, what’s taking you so long? Fashion show time!”

“Oh look, it’s nothing special,” Shirley called from the hallway, before she emerged in the outfit she was going to wear to Brad and Victoria’s wedding; wide-legged, black dress pants, a black, forest green and pink blouse, and a light, long-sleeved black top that ended mid-thigh and was loose and flowing.

“And see,” Angie explained proudly. “She can pin a beautiful pink flower to the black top as well, and it will all tie together nicely.”

“You look beautiful mum, honest,” Oscar said as he walked over to Shirley. He put a hand on her arm and leant down to kiss her cheek. 

“I feel like they’re going to be one of those families that really dresses up.”

“They might surprise you,” he assured her. “I’m sure they’re down to earth folks.”

“I’m sure,” Shirley said, sounding unconvinced. “But thank you Angie, I wouldn’t have found this amidst the thousands of clothes in that store without your help, and I do really like it. I could wear lots of different tops with an outfit like this too.”

“No worries,” Angie said with a smile. “That’s what I’m here for. Oh, that and to see how well Cam manages to replicate one of your famous lamb roasts I’ve always heard so much about!”

“Ah, I taught him well,” Shirley said, eyes glittering. “I couldn’t let my teenage boy insist on moving to the city without teaching him a thing or two first. I’m going to change back into my jeans now, but you like it?”

“I do mum,” Oscar said. “You’re gorgeous.”

“More like I’m just a bit fat and trying to hide it.”

“You’re not fat,” he said. “You’re short and squishy, I love that.”

“Cameron!” Angie said, aghast as she nonetheless started laughing; because he had leant down to give Shirley a proper, lingering, tight hug. 

“Oh, it’s okay Angie,” Shirley said on a laugh as she and Oscar parted. “He used to say it when he was a boy, once he discovered he was taller than me, inside joke.”

“Oh, right,” Angie said. “That’s okay then.”

“How I managed to produce three sons as tall and large as they all are, I’ll never know,” Shirley added with a smirk as she hurried back to the spare bedroom to change out of her good clothes for dinner. 

“Did you like mum’s outfit dad?” Oscar asked as he returned to the kitchen, though Angie had taken over supervising the gravy simmering on the stove, so he poured them all champagne instead. 

“I do.” Charlie looked about to talk more, but then decided that was all he had to say.

“A man of few words,” Oscar whispered in Angie’s ear as he handed her a glass. 

“As if you aren’t,” Angie said with a coy smile as she accepted her drink from him and their eyes met. “How was your interview?” So far, he hadn’t said a word. 

*

“Well I have an interview tomorrow,” Angie explained half an hour later as they sat down to dinner. Shirley had asked her if she had heard anything more about work and the transfers they were going to get. “I’ll need to find out more about what they want me for, but it’s either that or heading back to General Duties as a Senior Constable-”

“In a regular station?” Shirley asked. “Could they send you anywhere?”

“Technically yes, but if I knew where I wanted to be and rang around to a few stations first, if one had a vacancy and they were willing to take me, then we could just sort it out amongst ourselves. In a way I’d have more control than if I was in the Taskforce, because if I get a job in this new branch and it’s for a specific role…well they’re going to be spreading people out across the state to try to get on top of this drug thing. They could keep me in the city in what everyone is calling the Smack Squad, because it’s the section of the Taskforce that will be focusing on heroin. That’s where they’ve offered to put Pete and Danni-”

“Maybe you too?” Shirley asked hopefully.

“I wouldn’t want that,” Angie said with a shrug. “Not with my sister still out there using. I’m too close, and I wouldn’t want to be going out on jobs where I’m watching kids like her sticking needles in their arms.”

“And the section of the Taskforce that isn’t about heroin, that’s more, oh, what do they call it? Ice? Would that be any easier, to see what it does to people?”

“Not really,” Angie said with a bemused smile before she took a bite of Oscar’s roast lamb, which actually was delicious. She grinned at him. “This is really good. You’re officially cooking for me more often.”

“You’re welcome,” Oscar said with a laugh. 

Angie watched him rub his hands up and down his jeans in his seat, before he nervously met her eyes, his laughter suddenly gone.

“They didn’t make me an offer in the Smack Squad like Danni or Pete,” he said. He then looked at Shirley and Charlie and said, “I had an interview today myself”.

“What do they want you to do?” Shirley asked with wide blue eyes.

“Oh,” he said on a sigh. “They know I’m from the country, so they want to send me out on operational duties in the Bairnsdale area, way out East.”

“No way,” Angie said on a gentle, awed gasp. They had all been told of that possibility, but since Danni and Peter had been offered the chance to stay almost exactly where they were, she had stopped worrying. 

“What did you say?” Shirley asked cautiously. 

“I…said no thanks,” Oscar said as he looked into Angie’s eyes for reassurance. She sat back in her chair with her mouth open and put her cutlery down. “I said no,” he repeated. “I’m going to return to General Duties.”

“Really?” she asked as her eyes filled with tears. Her heart hammered in her chest.

Oscar pressed his lips together and nodded. 

“So you’ll just be a regular copper again?” Charlie asked. “No more running around pretending you’re someone else and all that nonsense?”

“Yeah dad, no more nonsense,” Oscar said with a barely concealed roll of his eyes. He looked quickly at Shirley before returning his attention to Angie. “They wanted to put me on the long assignment list and I said I had commitments and they said that’s funny, because there’s nothing on your file about a wife and kids. I had to tell him that I don’t have kids yet but I want ‘em, and that’s not going to happen if I’m locked in the Ice trade for a year or two in a country town…or at least, it wouldn’t happen the way I want it to. I reckon they’ll need to bring recruits into these undercover roles just a year or two out of the academy, like you and I, and like Danni when Mac first picked us…cos all us so-called experts from around the city, who’ve been doing this for years, we are looking at this job description now going ‘nuh’. Reg looks stressed.”

“Do you think I’ll get a similar offer?”

“Yeah, you will,” Oscar said. “Cos I asked.”

“You asked about me?” Angie said with wide eyes as she leant forward in her chair. “And he told you?”

“I asked about the whole set-up, like, how many police are they planning to have active in that area, how many undercover, and what their policy was on long assignments; as in, would I be on the inside on my own, or would there be others?”

“And Reg said me?”

“I don’t know what he’s going to tell you tomorrow, but if I had said yes, or even if I said I would think about it, he would have sat you down tomorrow and said that his great idea was for you and I to go and set up house in Bairnsdale as a married couple who didn’t mind breaking into the drug scene either. I said no. I’ve felt bad about that all afternoon, cos I probably stuffed up your chances too, but Ange, well, you know what would happen if something like that went ahead. It wouldn’t be right. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Angie said. “I would have said no too. I uh, wow, I wonder what he’s going to tell me tomorrow then?”

“He might try to send you there anyway, with some other bloke,” Oscar said. “At least now you know, and if he lies and says that I would be with you, don’t believe him. I’m gonna transfer back to uniform. I picked up the paperwork on my way out.”

“Is it the same as what Angie just explained?” Shirley asked. “That you could sort of pick where you want to go now, which stations you’d like to work at?”

“Yep,” Oscar said. “So I’ll have to give that some thought while I’m back home.”

“Maybe you could…pop into some of the police stations nearby?” Shirley asked with a hopeful little smile. 

Angie could tell that Shirley was trying to be very restrained, but she wanted her son home. She thought it was time, not because Shane and Brad had left and Oscar had some kind of responsibility to come home and do his duty to the land and the family, but because she missed him and his dad was definitely not alright, and because deep down she knew that Oscar loved the lifestyle more than he had ever admitted aloud.

“Maybe,” Oscar simply said, before looking at his dad and smirking. “If I’m not too busy working and riding horses, of course.”

Charlie chuckled as he continued to eat. 

“Will you get any time off in the next few weeks before your work closes down?” Shirley asked Angie. 

“I don’t think so,” she said. “We’ve still got a job on that I’m involved with, and that will last until next week, and there’s a lot to do in the meantime. We need to get things up to date and we need to pack and clean. I have to find a job! So uh, look I’d love to be able to come out for a weekend and give this poor guy a hand, make sure he’s coping all right having to be a farmhand again-”

“Hey!” Oscar said playfully before he chuckled. “Three days you spent on my farm, like you’re an expert?”

“Oh, so now it’s your farm?” Angie asked, smirking broadly. “But if I did get any time off, Shirley, it won’t be for another week at least.”

“It’s rare that Mac lets more than one of us have time off at once,” Oscar explained as he cut more of his roast on his plate to eat. “There has to be a really good reason.”

“You brought Michelle up that time,” Charlie said suddenly as he gestured to Angie. 

Oscar narrowed his eyes as he looked across the table at his father’s expression. It wasn’t joking like last time, or like the time before that. 

“Dad, that’s Angie,” he said with a bit of a playful chuckle.

“No, Michelle,” he said. “I met her at the hospital that time you got knocked out. Your mum told me all about your visit. First girl you brought home from the city.”

“Yeah but, this woman here, sitting beside me? Her name’s Angie.”

Charlie peered thoughtfully into Angie’s face as she smiled, blushing. She was keenly aware that Shirley had stopped eating to watch as well. Charlie’s dark eyes flickered across her face and he seemed to shake himself out of it, or he decided to cover.

“Of course,” Charlie said. “Of course I know that’s Angie. She looks a lot like Michelle.”

“Yeah, she does,” Oscar said as he reached beneath the table for Angie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I guess I just like a certain kind of woman.”

Angie held his hand tightly and moved his hand over her thigh, so that when he went to let go she flattened her hand over his and allowed him to rest his palm over her denim-clad leg. He only lingered for a second, but the way he squeezed her thigh assured her that everything was okay, and maybe he was grateful for her support. 

The phone rang from its spot on a small coffee table beside the couch in the living room, and Oscar excused himself in a soft voice to answer it. Angie met Shirley’s cautious, apologetic eyes and smiled at her, letting her know not to worry. 

“Hello,” Oscar said as he answered. 

“Doesn’t he even say who it is?” Charlie asked with a frown as he turned to look around at his son. “That is not how we taught him to answer the phone. Impolite.”

“It’s for security,” Angie said. “I was taught to say, ‘Hi, this is Angie’, by my parents too, but when you’re a cop like us and you don’t know who’s calling, it’s just safer.”

“What?” Oscar asked as he walked back into the compact dining area, gesturing for Angie to get up. “Danni, just tell me, how is she?”

“Mac?” Angie asked with urgent blue eyes as her mouth fell open. If Danni was on the phone, there wasn’t another ‘she’ they could be talking about. Oscar nodded, he looked stunned, and that was all Angie needed to get up and search for her handbag, and the silenced mobile phone sitting inside. They had their phones on silent. Shit!

“Well where have they taken her?” he asked. “Was she breathing?” 

Angie hurried back to him with her phone and bag in her hand and looked into his eyes, asking him the same question. He heaved a sigh of relief and nodded, and she let go of the breath she had been holding until he asked the next question.

“Did they use a spinal board? …Okay, you go, we’ll see you at the hospital. Bye.”

“What happened?” Angie asked on a breathless gasp when he hung up the phone and tossed it back towards the couch, where it bounced against the cushions. Oscar put his hands on his hips, took a deep breath, and looked between Angie and his parents. 

“Uh, the op tonight, Mac’s been injured on her way back to her car; attacked on the sidewalk. Danni and Pete missed it, they were packing up, and Danni says it was only a minute or two. They found her unconscious beside her car, head injury, possibly spinal. Danni says she was non-responsive in the rain, and Pete’s gone with her in the ambulance. The guys from Sex Crimes just rocked up…she’s staying there to hand over their surveillance footage and anything that might help. She sounds scared.”

“We gotta go,” Angie said as she hurried to Shirley. She leant down and kissed the older woman’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said as they parted and Angie also squeezed Charlie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry but I was meant to be there with her tonight and I’m not. This is the same person who killed that seventeen-year-old girl on the news this morning by beating her and breaking her neck, we’ve been running surveillance on a place we knew he might be. We have to get to the hospital right away in case-”

“Don’t say it,” Oscar said. “We’ll take your car. Mum, dad, enjoy dinner. If I’m not home tonight, I’ll be home tomorrow morning before you go. Don’t go without me.”

“We’ll wait to say goodbye,” Shirley said. “Drive safely, Angie. I hope Mac’s okay.”

“Me too,” Angie said as she laid a hand over her stomach and started silently praying.


	16. Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

Peter was leaning against a wall in the far corner of the emergency room when he saw Angie and Oscar rush through the sliding doors. They looked around with an urgency that he didn’t have anymore, now that Ellen was in the safest place possible, and he lifted a hand to get their attention. 

“Peter,” Angie said as she hurried over. He pushed himself off the wall and hugged her tightly as Oscar patted him on the back. They both let him go and looked straight into his weary, wet blue eyes. “How is she?”

“She’s off having tests, they told me to wait here,” he said. He rubbed his face when he felt a fresh round of tears welling up. He had cried in the ambulance at the sight of Ellen strapped into a spinal collar and at the sensation of her limp, warm hand in his. He was trying not to focus on that, though; he was trying not to jump to the worst possible conclusion. Instead, he focused on the facts. “She’s breathing,” he told them. “Her pulse is good, heart’s good, breathing is good. Not great, but stable. She was bleeding from her mouth when we found her, but the paramedic had a look and said she bit the inside of her lip. Pretty common, apparently?”

“Yeah,” Angie agreed softly. 

“I guess it means she was conscious for long enough to try fighting, but I swear to God she came out of the park just fine. She was crossing the street, Danni leant back and said, ‘she’s across’, and I switched off the comms. We couldn’t hear her from then on. Danni had her head down filling out the logbook. It only took maybe two minutes until I joined her…we sat there, Danni said something wasn’t right; Mac’s car wasn’t leaving. We turned comms back on, no answer, it was just minutes!”

“It’s not your fault,” Oscar said on a sigh as he gave Peter’s upper arm a squeeze. “It’s not Danni’s either, that’s just really bad timing. Did they get the guy?”

“No, we saw him run off, but Mac was more important. Danni will give a better description than me; she was directly ahead. And Mac, Mac will give a description when she wakes up. I can’t believe we missed it though, we missed him crossing the street right after her, or, or we should have watched her actually get into her car. I turned off the earpiece without thinking about it. What if she thought it was still on? What if in that minute she tried to call out for backup, and we didn’t come?”

“You did,” Oscar said as he gripped both of Peter’s arms more firmly and looked into his eyes. “You did get there, as soon as you knew something wasn’t right.”

“Did anything weird happen tonight?” Angie asked. 

“No, textbook. The weather was bad, there were even less people around than normal by the time she was heading out. The blonde smoker bloke was there again, Mac introduced herself as Leanne and he said his name was Ben, but he left after she passed the first time, and he walked off in the opposite direction. We didn’t see anyone following Mac, we had no clue.”

“Let’s sit down,” Oscar suggested as he guided Peter to the nearby chairs. He and Angie sat either side of Peter, and Angie held Peter’s nearest hand in both of hers. “So they’ve taken her for a scan?” Oscar asked. 

“Yeah uh, MRI, Cat-scan, X-ray, all of the above, I dunno, I forget what they said. It’s to look for any bleeding and swelling in her, uh, in her brain-” His voice cracked as he rushed through the rest, “and to check for broken bones”.

“Oh Pete,” Angie said softly as he covered his face with his free hand and wept. She had never seen him cry before. She let go of his hand and he leant forward to rest his elbows on his legs and cover his face with both hands. Angie and Oscar both put arms around his back as they stared at each other over his hunched torso. “She’ll be okay,” Angie assured them both as she rubbed Peter’s back and stared into Oscar’s worried eyes. “She’ll be fine.”

*

“Why would he attack her at her car?” Danni asked two hours later as they remained in their huddle. She had arrived ten minutes earlier, flustered after having stayed back at the scene for so long, speaking to Jeff and his colleagues and giving a statement, before handing over access to their evidence inside the communications van. 

“Well he already broke his M.O. this morning to kill Kiera,” Oscar suggested. “Maybe he realised the park was under surveillance, spotted the new cameras we hid, or uh…maybe he realised that Mac was a cop. Are they dusting her car for prints?”

“Yeah but it was raining on and off. It has to be targeted, right?” Danni asked, afraid to admit she agreed with him. “It couldn’t just be random. Whoever this was, he’s been watching her in that park. Probably you as well, Angie.”

“It definitely wasn’t the smoker?” Angie asked. “The one Mac spoke to?”

“Definitely not,” Peter mumbled. “This guy was taller.”

“True,” Danni confirmed. “The person we saw running away looked like a tall man, in dark clothes, a dark jacket and long pants. He had a hat on, so I couldn’t see his hair or anything, and he was running away from us. I recognised the hat though, under the light from the streetlights he was passing? It was Mac’s baseball cap. She wasn’t wearing it when we got to her.”

“Good,” Angie said, glaring into the distance. “When they catch him, hopefully he still has that hat with her DNA on it and it’ll be a straightforward conclusion.”

“Did they say how long this would take?” Danni asked Peter. He shook his head. 

“How long does it take to put an unconscious person through all those machines?” he asked. “It depends what they find, or how she’s doing. They did rush her in, I mean, she’s a senior cop with head trauma so uh…she won’t be waiting in the queue.”

“Oh, this might be us,” Angie said as she was looking around, only to see a serious-looking dark skinned woman in a white coat come out from behind the closed doors that guarded the hallway that critical patients were wheeled down straight out of the backs of ambulances. It didn’t seem to matter that the four of them were not wearing police uniforms, they must have been giving off a vibe; either that or she recognised Peter from earlier. She came right to them. 

“Ellen Mackenzie?” she asked. 

“Yes,” Peter said as he stood. “I’m her partner, Peter, these are our colleagues.”

“Ellen has no family listed on her Medicare-”

“That’s right,” Peter said. “Her parents are in Sydney, they’re not close and she hasn’t seen them in years. I uh…” He glanced at the others before returning his attention to the doctor. “I actually have a Medical Enduring Power of Attorney, we’ve had one in each other’s names for years. But I don’t have it on me, it’s at home. Do I need it?”

“Not for now,” she said. “I’m Doctor Davis, I’m Ellen’s doctor.”

“Nice to meet you,” Angie said at Peter’s side, as the others all smiled and said ‘hi’.

“How’s she doing?” Peter asked. 

“Stable for now,” Doctor Davis said with a cautiously optimistic smile. “The X-Ray shows no broken bones, and she’s responding to stimuli on her hands and feet. There is some significant bruising and swelling around her neck, we’ll keep the collar on until she’s moving freely for peace of mind, but we’re confident that there is no spinal damage. She’s breathing on her own and her vitals have improved since they were first recorded. The head injury is of course the largest concern. The good news is that there is no skull fracture, and no sign of critical bleeding or swelling of the brain.”

“Oh, thank God,” Oscar said under his breath. 

“However, Ellen has not yet regained consciousness and there is also some internal swelling and bruising consistent with perhaps a severe concussion, as well as external bruising at the back of the skull,” Doctor Davis continued. “Every person reacts differently to head trauma and brain injuries, and we might have to wait and see what Ellen has in store for us. Her test results seem to indicate the trauma suffered was on the lower end of the scale, but given that she hasn’t regained consciousness, her condition is still serious. I have a ward number for you now, and we’ll monitor her closely over the next twenty-four hours. For now, Ellen is not in an induced coma because the swelling we observed on the scan is minimal, but be aware it could flare overnight and that is what we’ll be checking regularly for. In the meantime, I’ve ordered a milder sedative to prolong the amount of rest she gets. Sleep is the best thing for her right now, so Ellen won’t wake up tonight, but you can sit with her.”

“She’s going to be okay?” Peter asked with a raised brow.

“I’ve learned not to make promises but I think it’s likely. She has a very good chance of recovering from this, with rest. Her injuries are similar to some of the other women who’ve been brought in beaten in parks. We had Kiera Rudonikis here this morning. I’m told Ellen’s a police officer. Were you trying to find out who’s been doing this?”

“Yes, and we’re all police here,” Danni said. “We were conducting surveillance in a known area. You said Mac’s injuries are similar to some of the other women; you mean the ones who all recovered and got to go home, right? Some of them had memory problems, they didn’t remember things-”

“Everyone is different,” Doctor Davis replied calmly. “We’re taking good care of your colleague.” She handed a scrap of paper to Peter. “This is her ward number. If Ellen does deteriorate overnight, we might need you to make some decisions-”

“I can tell you what Ellen wants,” Peter said. “All she wants is not to be left lingering brain dead in a coma. So until she’s on life support or her body is shutting down on her, if we can prevent those things from even becoming a consideration, then I’ll be giving permission to do whatever it is you recommend.”

“I understand,” Doctor Davis said with a gentle smile. “Go sit with her. She’s doing very well, considering. It could be a long twenty-four hours, but she’s very lucky.”

“Thank you,” Peter said before the woman walked away from him, and he looked down at the paper, which had a ward number on a few brief directions scribbled on it.

“Okay, let’s go,” Danni said as she patted Peter on the back and strode towards another set of doors leading off from the emergency department, which according to the signage led to the main hospital. Peter, Angie and Oscar followed, and five minutes later they found the nurse’s station for the correct ward. 

“We’re looking for Ellen Mackenzie?” Peter said. “She’s new.”

“The police officer, yes,” the nurse said as she checked her file. “Are you family, or-”

“I’m Peter, her partner. I also have power of attorney if it’s needed,” Peter said, because it had worked for him so far. “These are our colleagues. We’re all police.”

“Okay. It is past visiting hours and only one of you can stay, but the rest of you can say a quick hello. Ellen is in a room with other patients, so please be quiet.”

“We just want to see her,” Angie assured her as the nurse stood and moved around from behind her desk. “Then we’ll come back when it’s visiting hours tomorrow, as long as Peter can stay.”

The nurse looked him up and down. 

“He looks the type to fall asleep in an uncomfortable chair,” she quipped. “I’ll rustle one up. You should also know that we’ve put her clothes in plastic bags for the police for testing, like the others. The only personal item she came in with was a car key-”

“Oh, can we take it?” Danni asked. “We’ve had to leave her car parked right alongside where this happened, and we’ll need to move it for her.”

“You’ll have to fill out a form but as long as it’s okay with her partner-”

“Fine, fine,” Peter said. He was aware that Oscar was smirking at him, and out of the corner of his eyes he saw Angie elbow Oscar in the ribs. They followed the nurse towards a room with six beds in it, and Ellen’s bed was right by the door on the left. Peter stood back and let the others in first, because they couldn’t stay, and he was fairly sure this nurse was going to stand there and make sure of it. 

Danni went to one side of the bed, and Oscar and Angie on the other. Peter stood at the foot of the bed and just watched. Ellen was in a white hospital gown, covered to her waist by a white hospital blanket. She was lying on her back with a minimalist plastic spinal collar still wrapped around her neck, but otherwise she looked like she was sleeping. Her left index finger was covered by a pulse clip, wires from beneath her gown at her chest drew back towards a heart and blood pressure monitor, and an IV line was delivering fluids into a vein in the crook of her right elbow. 

“Oh Mac,” Danni said softly as she brushed some of Mac’s dark hair away from her forehead, even though it wasn’t in her face. “I’m so sorry. It’s not the way you should spend your birthday. We’ll come back to sit with you tomorrow, you can bet on that. They said you’re going to sleep all night, hopefully you won’t miss us.”

“Happy birthday Mac,” Angie said softly as she leant over and kissed Ellen on her nearest temple. “We’ll be back, we promise. Please hang in there; you’re doing really well. Hang in there.” 

Angie moved back so that Oscar could take her place, and he sighed and stared down at his boss. He brushed the back of a shaking index finger across her cheek. 

“This,” he said. “Is a really bad attempt to get me to stay a couple extra days, you know that, don’t you? See you tomorrow, boss.” 

The nurse touched Peter on the arm to get his attention and he looked at her with a tired smile. 

“We need you to fill in some paperwork, if you can.”

“Yeah, no worries,” he said. “I’ll fill out what I’m able to.” He went to pat the front pocket of his shirt before realising that he didn’t have what he needed. He looked to Danni and said, “Bugger. I left my reading glasses in the surveillance van.”

“I’ll stay and help,” she said, sadly eager to make up for her contribution to the night’s events. “And I’ll bring you some food before I leave as well; we didn’t eat.”

“Thanks Danni,” he said. He finally moved, and approached Ellen from Danni’s side of the bed. He let his fingers trail smoothly up Ellen’s outstretched arm. She did not respond at all, deeply asleep because of her injury or the sedative, or both. His other hand covered the top of her head and the soft ruffling of her hair. 

Peter felt his eyes well with tears again as he looked at her – he could hear her breathing softly – and he shut his eyes and leant over to press a lingering kiss to her forehead. Her skin smelt like the soap they used in hospitals, but he could just smell the remnants of her morning shampoo, and he touched his forehead to hers when his lips left her. He sucked in a deep breath, full of courage, and lifted his head to look down into her closed eyes. Her lashes flickered a bit as she inhaled a breath through her nose, a deeper, healthier breath, he thought. Or perhaps that was wishful thinking.

“I’m here,” he said to her. “I’m right here, Elle. I have to go fill out some forms but I’ll be back. Hang in there, beautiful. You’re gonna be just fine. See you soon mate.” 

He sighed as he stood and reluctantly took his hands from her arm and her head. He looked back towards the nurse, not caring what the others thought of the tears on his cheeks or what they had just heard him call her. All he wanted was to get the paperwork out of the way and maybe to grab a handful of muesli bars for the night ahead, and he wanted to sit beside her until she woke up and told him she was okay.

That was it. 

“Come on Pete,” Danni said gently as she rubbed his arm and put a hand to his back to guide him back outside. “We’ll get the admin sorted and then you can sit with her and hold her hand properly. Come with me.”

He followed her out silently, as did Angie and Oscar, Oscar casting one last lingering look over his shoulder. 

The nurse handed Danni the papers that needed filling out, a clipboard to rest on, and a pen. She then directed them to a couple of seats in the hallway several metres away, and soon Peter and Danni were sitting side-by-side, with Oscar and Angie off on the hunt for bottled water and something that they could bring Peter to eat.

“You okay?” Danni asked softly once they were alone. Peter shut his eyes and nodded. “She’s going to be all right, she looks pretty good,” Danni added. 

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “It just happened so fast, Danni. It doesn’t take long.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she said on a sigh. “I take it you really do have power of attorney?”  
Peter nodded and Danni bravely asked, “And you call her Elle?”

“Sometimes,” he whispered. “Sorry. I’m sorry Danni.”

“Hey, for what? Don’t be silly,” she said. She wrapped an arm around his back and rested her chin on his shoulder for a few seconds. “It’s me, remember?” she told him quietly. “Years ago when we had our little affair, you ended up telling me all about you and Mac. I know you love her. But are you in love with her? Does she know?”

Peter shook his head and brushed the quick-drying tears from his cheeks. He had tried to show Ellen, he thought she knew, but he hadn’t told her. Neither of them had said it, and he wasn’t going to start saying it while she was unconscious. That wasn’t fair.


	17. Chapter 17

SEVENTEEN

“Do you uh, want to come in?” Oscar asked as Angie pulled her car up alongside the curb outside the front of his house, behind his parents’ SUV. She sighed and turned the ignition off before consenting. It was nearly midnight, but she really did not want to drive the rest of the way to her own home. Not that night. 

“I should have been there, Oscar.”

“Oh hey, Ange-”

“I don’t blame you or your parents or anything,” Angie said hurriedly as she looked at him with wide blue eyes. “That’s not what I mean. I just feel…guilty.”

“You usually take off straight after you’re done on your run anyway, you would have been back at the factory by the time this happened.”

“Yeah but with Kiera this morning, I might have stayed. I did once before when we found the money and it didn’t feel right. I could have done something, I dunno…”

“You heard Danni after we left Pete alone with Mac; they did everything right. It was a matter of minutes. Peter secured the van while Danni went ahead, armed. The guy ran off, she kept Mac still, made sure she was breathing, Pete radioed for help, and the ambulance was there within a few minutes. It could not have been handled any better. And hey, if it wasn’t her, it might’ve been you. We wouldn’t want that either, right?”

“Right,” Angie said softly. She sniffled and wiped the gathering tears from her eyes. “She’s lucky, I guess, like the doctor said. It sucks that it’s her birthday, but she’s not on life support, she’s not critical. She’s more like the other women than Kiera-”

“That poor girl probably got her neck broken in a moment of bad timing and bad luck,” Oscar said. “In my gut, I don’t think that was deliberate. Whoever is doing this is way out of control. Maybe he’s on drugs or something, I dunno, but he is legit psycho. Mac is…so fucking lucky. Think she managed to try defending herself?”

“Yeah I do,” Angie said. “And even if she only delayed the really bad blows for ten or twenty seconds, that took away the time he had in which to do it again and again and again. Did you see her face? It’s not bruised, not like the others. Maybe it just hasn’t come up yet, but he didn’t fracture her jaw like the second victim or break her nose like the third…Maybe Mac somehow made sure that he only had time for one really bad knock before he felt like he had to run. Maybe she saved herself from worse.”

“Come in for a cuppa,” Oscar said as he looked at his house. His parents had left the porch light on but the house itself was dark. “I’m positive mum and dad have gone to bed. I’d really like you to stay, Ange. Just for company.”

“Yes please,” Angie said with a sad laugh as they looked at each other. Oscar chuckled. He got out of the car, and waited while Angie got her backup bag out of the boot of her car. He knew it contained a change of clothes and doubles of useful toiletries and odds and ends, in case she got to work one day after a run and realised her locker was empty of fresh clothes, or in case she got gravel or blood or cup-a-soup on her clothes while she was on duty and her locker remained just as empty.

“You right?” Oscar asked as she shut the boot and slung the canvas bag over one shoulder, her handbag hanging off her opposite arm. 

“Yeah,” she said softly. “Thanks Oscar. Are you really not leaving tomorrow?”

“I’ll see how Mac pulls up in the morning. I might leave Saturday instead. It’s just that there are animals out there, you know? The nearest neighbours have the dog but there are chickens and horses. Otherwise I’d just say the house can look after itself-”

“But you want to go back for other reasons too,” she said as they walked slowly to the front door. “See how everything else is looking, like fences and the house. Maybe it can’t look after itself like it used to?”

“Mm,” Oscar hummed. He sighed as he opened the front door. “You can put your stuff in my room if you want,” he whispered as Angie passed him and he hung back to lock the house up securely. He switched off the porch light. “I mean you can have the couch, or you don’t have to stay, but-”

“No, it’s fine,” she said. His bedroom was on the right side of the hallway by the entrance, and the spare room was on the left. Oscar’s bedroom door was open; his parents’ door was closed. He gestured and she walked into the dark room first, but as she lingered with her bag at the foot of his bed he quickly walked in and leant down to switch on the lamp on one of the bedside tables. 

“Let’s have a herbal tea or something,” he whispered. 

Angie wiped her hands over her face again and nodded as she followed him into the kitchen. Shirley had left the light on over the stove and that was enough to be able to see and move around. She had left a note on the bench, and as Oscar filled the jug with water, Angie leant over to whisper the note aloud. 

“Cam, I’ve put both your dinners in the fridge. Warm them up if you get home hungry. Love mum.”

“Both dinners?” Oscar asked. “Yours and mine?”

“I guess she figured if it was bad news I’d be back,” Angie said with a soft smile in his direction as he scoffed and shook his head. “She’s very sweet…and she’s right.”

“Yeah, yeah, details!”

“Oscar,” she said as he got two mugs out of the drawer and dropped some kind of herbal teabag into each. He looked at her and she continued, “While the jug’s boiling, do you think I could get a hug here?”

“Yeah,” he said as he broke into a grin. He ambled up to her as she stood up straighter, and as he wrapped his arms around her waist she stretched up on her tiptoes to get her arms around his neck and shoulders. Oscar stooped down and buried his face in her neck as Angie shut her eyes and just let herself relax. “When’s the last time we did this, Ange?” Oscar asked into her neck as she tightened her hold around his neck and shoulders and he gave her an affectionate squeeze in return.

“Years,” she mumbled. “And it’s been years since one of us has been in hospital.”

“She’ll be right, mate.”

“I know,” Angie said softly. She sighed and then released her grip on him, a signal that he should also let go. He did, but his hands slid down to linger on her hips as he looked into her eyes. He offered her a shy sort of smile that she returned. 

“So are you hungry?” he asked. “We could heat up dinner.”

“I might just eat a piece of bread or something. It’s pretty late. Bread, tea, bed.”

“That sounds like an unbelievably good plan,” Oscar said. “Hey uh, do you think Church really does have Power of Attorney for Mac?”

“Yes,” Angie said. “He’d put on the partner stuff a bit to make sure that he could see her, that we could all get in to see her, but he wouldn’t lie about something like having Power of Attorney. It makes me feel better actually, knowing he has that.”

“I never thought to give anyone Power of Attorney,” Oscar said. 

“Me either, but I think at some point over the years Peter was getting himself into so much trouble on the job that Mac called him in to make sure that she knew what he wanted, who to contact, what should be done, and he would have done a trade; I’ll make you mine if you make me yours.”

“That sounds likely,” Oscar said on a quiet laugh as the jug boiled. He quickly poured two cups of coffee, while Angie opened the door to his fridge and retrieved a simple loaf of multigrain bread. “Can you get me a slice too?” he asked. 

“Ahuh.”

“Do you think he was really putting on the partner stuff with her?” 

“Um…I did at first,” Angie said as she carried the bread and Oscar carried the two mugs in the direction of his room. They would sit on his bed and whisper to each other while they drank and ate, and then they could get ready for bed and sleep. Angie hadn’t slept beside another person in years, and it was difficult to describe how suddenly and how keenly she was looking forward to it, just to have a friendly arm to hold onto as she slept. 

“What about when we all got to see her?” Oscar pressed. “Church looked genuinely upset. He called her beautiful, like that’s his pet name for her.”

“Well Pete was there when it happened,” Angie said. “I dunno, Oscar. It’s no secret he’s had his eye on her, on and off, or that they’ve gotten really close again in the last few months. They weren’t close for a while there, but it’s almost like back to normal, like how it was years and years ago, with all of us too. I don’t think there was much in it besides the fact Pete thought he might lose her, his best friend, cos you know Mac’s been that person in his life for a decade. I think if it was you in that hospital bed I’d be just as upset as Pete was over Mac, and it would be genuine but it’s not as though it’d be based on us being something more. Why…do you think they are?”

“Dunno,” Oscar said. “I still think they had something going on, back in the day, before he got it on with Christina Rossi and proposed to her and tried to quit and all that fun stuff – anything to get away from being around his ex every day, right? But I always figured that after it all blew over, that they’d pick up whatever they left off.”

“There is no way they’ve been in a relationship all this time, Oscar,” Angie said as she rearranged herself on his bed. She held her bread in her teeth until she was comfortable, then returned to balancing her bread in one hand and her tea in the other. 

“I dunno,” Oscar said wisely. “That sculpture he had made? At the end of the day that was hugely personal, and she kissed him last night in front of us.”

“Just like you and I kiss,” Angie said simply. Oscar raised his eyes at her pointedly and she corrected herself. “How you and I would kiss, if we kissed, but we don’t.”

“Because we always said it was a no-go when we worked together,” Oscar said. “We tried once, and you laughed because it was too weird at work. Angie, we don’t work together anymore. I go off for two weeks and come back and we say goodbye and then who knows where we end up. What if I don’t come back? What if they offer me a job out bush and I take it? What, I’ll just never see you again?”

“Oscar, Mac’s just had someone try to bash her head in. If she wasn’t so lucky she could be in surgery having holes drilled into her skull to relieve the pressure. That’s what they do, you know? Then they put the person on life support. We all know that at another time or place we could have arrived at that hospital and watched Pete make the hardest decision he would ever have to make in his life. He knows that, I guarantee that right now in this reality he is sitting beside her picturing that alternate reality. I don’t think tonight is a really good time to be talking about our relationship.”

“Yeah, okay,” Oscar said softly. He took a sip of his tea and added, “I wanted to though, before all this. I wanted to talk to you about us tonight.”

“I know,” Angie said. “I wanted that too.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” Oscar said as he held his tea in his lap, his half-remaining slice of bread perched on his knee. He was looking down at the quilt between them, and Angie bridged that gap by putting her own bread on her knee to stretch out that hand in his direction. He saw her hand slide into his vision, and lifted his head to smile at her. “I know you giggled that time we kissed, but-”

“I was embarrassed,” she said. “We were in the locker rooms, teasing each other like always, and it just happened. Mac had already caught us flirting and given us the look. I wasn’t in the moment. I was also, what, twenty-seven, twenty-eight? We were kids.”

“Kids?”

“Well yeah,” Angie said softly. “I guess since I turned thirty it’s changed some things for me… I look in the mirror and I see a woman, not like a kid pretending to be a grown up – a grown up policewoman, of all things – which is probably more what I felt like in my twenties. Does that make sense? Maybe it’s a maturity thing? I just look back on four, five, six, eight, ten years ago, I look at my boyfriends and my life and think, ‘Actually, I was just a kid’. Please don’t make me keep trying to explain-”

“No, no, I get it,” he said. “Does that mean…would you like to try it again, then?”

“Can I finish my bread first?” she asked as she retrieved it from her leg to keep nibbling. Oscar stifled a yawn and nodded, and she chuckled. “Talk to me to stay awake,” she suggested. “How are you feeling about turning down the Taskforce?”

“Fine,” he said. “It was my decision and I probably made it quickly compared to everyone else, but I knew it was the right thing to do for me. What time is your interview tomorrow?”

“Eleven,” she said. “I’ll go and see Mac first thing, and I’ll go straight there.”

“Do you think anyone is going to stay together, work-wise?” Oscar asked. 

“Probably not,” Angie said. “Oh, unless Pete and Danni both end up working together of course, since they’ve both been offered a spot in the same branch. And Mac, I suppose…she didn’t tell me where in the Taskforce they wanted to put her, but Reg is really keen to get her on board. She said she would think about it.”

“It will be strange if those three, or you four, if you all end up working together still and I’m not.”

“I won’t be going to the Smack Squad,” Angie said as she shook her head definitely. “I couldn’t do that, not with everything I’ve gone through with Sam over the years, and my parents…it would just hurt too much, or I would get too angry. I don’t want to be that bitter sort of person. I don’t know if I want drugs shoved in my face. The great thing about our job now, is it’s never just been all about drugs. It’s been about people, and we’ve worked on a huge range of different cases, but in the Taskforce you’d be living and breathing these drug rackets and you’d be constantly meeting with dealers and users and coming up against other people in the community…I don’t know if grown-up-Angie wants that for her life.”

“What do you want?”

“I want babies,” Angie said on a sigh as she rolled her eyes. “And I actually wouldn’t mind putting a uniform on again. Being a Sergeant one day would be pretty awesome. And I want to be healthy, mentally as well as physically. I would really like to have someone tell me that they love me every now and then. I’ve been loving work recently because it feels like there’s some soul back in the place, you know?”

“It’s Mac,” Oscar said. “She’s coming out of her office more in the last month or two, haven’t you noticed? She’s more open when she talks to us, friendlier, she hangs out with us again, and I think Pete gave her a nudge, all the time she’s been training him to do Sergeant-related duties. Before that, she was bringing down morale working behind closed doors...you feel like that about work because you got your mate back.”

“Do you think we’ll stay in touch?” Angie asked. She finished her bread and brushed the few crumbs off her lap, before finishing the tea that she still held in one hand.

“I really want to say yes,” Oscar said as he did the same. “But I don’t know.”

“You’re pretty much thinking that you want a job out near your parents, right? Not that you’d ever come right out and say that in front of them, but I guessed.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said. “Time for another big life change. I’ll see what I feel like when I’m actually back in the district in a day or two, but I can’t see myself in Fitzroy or Frankston or even at HQ. I can’t see myself in a suit. I never fit in with those guys to begin with…you’ve teased me about it often enough, but I really am a laid back kind of country lad at heart. I want a quieter life after fifteen years of being a city copper, and spending half that time in the craziest, most exciting, hellish, and successful undercover unit out there. And now? I’ll take a home among the gum trees, please.”

“Your mum is going to be so proud,” Angie teased softly. “As if she doesn’t already see all this in your eyes.” She turned to put her cup on the bedside table and then crawled back onto the mattress to sit closer to him. He expectantly put his empty cup on the mattress beside him. It tipped, but there was nothing to spill.

“Ange, I want that home with you,” he said in earnest as he looked into her eyes. “That’s what I dream about. I think we both want the same thing out of our lives. All those things you said, I want them too. Health, kids, love, the uniform, a good job, I-”

Angie cut him off by taking his face in her hands and kissing him. Oscar huffed softly when she caught him off guard, but quickly wrapped his arms around her and pulled her torso a few inches closer. Their lips were closed at first, but Oscar opened his mouth when he felt Angie quickly seeking entry, and he stifled a moan when her tongue brushed against his. Her hands threaded through his short, springy hair and she pressed her chest against his as Oscar dug his fingers into her sweater at her back and reached up to drag his fingers up and down the back of her neck. She moaned quietly in the base of her throat and tilted her head a different way as Oscar dove his tongue into her mouth. Angie’s pulse was racing. It had been a big day, they were highly-strung, tired and emotional, and he felt so good. If they didn’t stop, they wouldn’t.

She forced herself to pull away, out of breath. Oscar was panting too. She rested her forehead against his and then slid it down towards his cheek as she grinned. 

“See,” she said. She looked up into his sparkling, hopeful, aroused eyes with an affectionate, so-there, happy twinkle in her own. “I didn’t laugh that time.”


	18. Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

“Good morning Cam,” Charlie said happily as Oscar wandered down the hallway in his usual navy pyjama pants and t-shirt. His hair was tussled, his eyes felt sleepy and he felt dazed from sex. It was not yet seven a.m., but he knew they wanted to get driving early, and considering that Charlie seemed to be clearer in the head first thing, Oscar wanted to make sure that still happened. His mum was in the kitchen making breakfast, while his dad flicked through one of Oscar’s Police Life magazines.

It was perhaps the first time his dad had ever even touched something to do with the police. Oscar smiled at him and said good morning, but quickly raised his eyebrows in Shirley’s direction and gestured to what it was his father was looking at.

“We’ve given it a lot of thought,” Shirley told him. “And we think your decision to go back to a regular station is a very good one. Don’t we Charlie?”

“Yeah, no more dangerous play-acting shit.”

“Thank you for that vote of confidence,” Oscar said with a happy laugh. He gave his dad a brief pat on the back; it was the equivalent of a long hug, before he walked into the kitchen to kiss his mum on the cheek. “So, breakfast?” he asked. “Can I help? It is my house.”

“Ahh!” Charlie said when he saw another figure walking down the hall. “Good morning Angie.”

“Hi,” she said, blushing as she made an appearance. She was wearing shorts and a faded and baggy t-shirt from her bag of spare clothes. She was self-consciously making it baggier and playing with the hem so that it didn’t cling to her breasts. She hadn’t put a bra on, but she had combed her hair and tucked it neatly behind her ears. 

“How is your boss?” Shirley asked, not even batting an eyelid at Angie still being there, despite Charlie sitting on the kitchen stool having a right old chuckle.

“She’ll probably be okay,” Oscar said from beside his mum. “She was unconscious when we left but we weren’t allowed to stay. I’m going to see you off, then go in this morning with Ange, and if all goes well I’ll leave maybe early this arvo. Okay?”

“That’s fine, Cam,” Shirley said. “We won’t be there, you take your time visiting with Mac. I hope she wakes up as soon as possible?”

“We do as well,” Angie confirmed. “Our friend Peter stayed with her last night, so she wasn’t alone, and we haven’t had any phone calls. That’s good.”

“I’m sure they’re taking good care of her,” Shirley said. “Now, do you want some toast darling?”

“Uh, I might have a shower actually,” she said as her eyes flickered towards Oscar and back. “I just wanted to make sure you both weren’t leaving right away-”

“I think we can wait until you’re out of the shower to say goodbye,” Shirley said.

“I dunno,” Charlie mumbled playfully into Oscar’s magazine. “Depends how long you take, doesn’t it?”

“Oh dad, you’re hilarious!” Oscar said as he rolled his eyes and laughed. 

“Angie, go get comfortable,” Shirley said. She gestured between Charlie and Oscar. “I’ll work on getting these two food so they can start chewing and stop talking.”

Angie laughed and grinned at the older woman. She quickly smiled in Oscar’s direction as well, before returning down the hall to his bedroom. 

Oscar moseyed around the kitchen making four cups of tea until the moment that Shirley heard the bathroom door shut and the shower pipes rattle to life. She turned on Oscar and poked him in the ribs with the egg-flipper.

“Oi!” he said, squirming away. “Mum-”

“So she does stay over! You said-”

“Aw mum, it was just last night. She didn’t want to go back to her place after visiting Mac, it was upsetting, and I didn’t want her to go. It was nothing major.”

Shirley crossed her arms as she leant back against the kitchen bench, the utensil still dangerously held in hand. Her blue-green eyes were sparkling as she grinned at him. 

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “I heard you last night, or should I say, early this morning? I’m very happy right now.”

“Aw mum!” Oscar said, blushing as the jug boiled and he could finally pour the water into the cups with tea bags that he had neatly arranged in a group of four. “Please don’t embarrass her. She’s a grown woman, as she tells me last night, like I didn’t already know.” 

Shirley chuckled and turned her attention back to breakfast.

“Well you better go and make sure that the positively lovely woman in your shower – who you better not let slip through your fingers now that you won’t be working together anymore or else – has a towel,” she quipped. “Because last time I checked there was just the one on the rack; your father’s and mine are on our beds.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Oscar said as he rolled his eyes, picked up the cup of tea he’d made for Angie, and walked back down the hall towards the bathroom and the nearby hallway closet where he kept a stack of old ratty towels. He found the nicest one he could with his one free hand, and went to knock on the bathroom door. 

“Yeah?” Angie called as the water was turned off. 

“Just me,” Oscar said. He shoved the towel under his arm so that he could turn the handle and poke his head inside the room. It wasn’t too steamy, Angie had kept the window open for fresh air despite the cool morning outside, and she had poked her head out from behind his shower curtain. “Brought you a towel,” he said. “And a cuppa.”

“Thanks Oscar,” she replied. She smirked when he hesitated, unsure of how to proceed now that they both had their heads in the same space, but nothing else. “You can come in,” she told him finally, doing her best not to laugh. 

“Oh, right,” he said, chuckling slightly, aware that his mother was probably listening down the hall while his father pretended not to care. He slipped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, before sighing with relief. Once inside, he was able to put the cup of tea beside the sink and he held the towel out for her. Angie disappeared back behind the shower curtain once she had it, and Oscar decided that was probably a good time to leave again.

“Oscar, wait,” Angie said. He turned at the door to see her climbing out of the tub with the towel securely fastened between her breasts, and he hurriedly looked back up at her smiling, flushed face. 

“Yeah?” he asked. 

“About last night,” she said. 

“Ye-eah?” he asked again on a slow drawl, wincing at what she was about to say. Angie chuckled and leant a hip against the sink cabinetry.

“I know I said beforehand that it wasn’t the right time for us to be talking about our relationship-”

“We did a little more than talk about it last night Ange. Are you…feeling okay?”

“It had been a while but I’m fine, just tired!” she said with another bemused laugh and a grin. She stretched her hand out to collect her fingers on his shirt and pull him a few steps closer. “I wanted it to happen, I know you did. I just want to check that…that it lived up to expectations. Not in a ‘was it good for you too baby’ kind of way, that’s gross, but in the sense that…I hope you’re not having second thoughts?”

“No way,” Oscar said in earnest as his eyes filled with emotion. He held her hips over the material of the thick towel and took a step closer to her. Angie put her hands on his chest to lean back slightly, so she could look him in the eyes. “The way I see it,” he mumbled, blushing. “We weren’t taking advantage of each other being emotional about Mac or work, it wasn’t all about life being too short so let’s go for it. I…took it more seriously than that, Ange. It was passionate and everything but like, it was also about us agreeing to a future together. To be…a family.” He hesitated when he saw her blue eyes fill with tears. “Is that, uh, I mean…are you having second thoughts?”

“No I’m not,” she said softly. She stretched up on her tiptoes for a kiss that Oscar leant down for, before he combed one of his hands through her damp, ruffled hair. “Actually,” Angie continued. “I’m doing the old schoolgirl panic, wondering if anyone’s going to be able to tell just by looking at me, like your mum for instance, plus I’m wondering what on earth I’m going to say in my interview with Reg today.”

“Well you can scrub the first one off your list,” Oscar said plainly as he stared at her with raised eyebrows. Angie looked at him with wide eyes and an open mouth as her cheeks flushed red. “Yeah. It turns out mum waited up for me, like all good – crazy – mothers do. I reckon she heard a few things she wasn’t supposed to. Surprise!”

“Oh man!” Angie said, whining and laughing at the same time as she covered her face with one of her hands. “You better get out then, she’ll think we’re doing more than just talking, again!”

“I don’t think she minds so much,” Oscar said. He smiled happily at her and tucked some hair behind one of her ears, before leaning down to tenderly kiss her cheek. Angie sighed and relaxed against him for half a second, which made his insides jitter.   
“Love you Ange,” he whispered before he pulled away. He went to leave, but he looked over his shoulder before he stepped outside of the bathroom and saw Angie turn towards the mirror, wiping at her tired, emotional eyes. She was just nodding, and she did glance at him with a watery smile. 

“You too,” she managed, before shooing him out. 

*

For several hours, Peter’s chair had been as close to Ellen’s bedside as he could get it. Any fear that she had spinal injuries like Kiera Rudonikis had vanished, because over the early hours of the morning and as winter sun began to stream in through the hospital room’s window, Ellen had made some kind of transition from sedated and unmoving to asleep and more physically free. Every so often she would move a foot or a whole leg beneath her sheet and blanket, on both her left and right side. She had also flopped her nearest arm out towards him, to the point that her wrist had been hanging limply off the side of the bed, palm turned upwards. He had taken that hand two hours ago and returned it to the mattress, but he had also barely let it go since, preferring to rest his eyes with his head on the mattress beside her and her hand in his.

“Ah, good morning,” Doctor Davis said as she strode in and immediately removed Ellen’s file from the foot of her bed. Peter looked at her tiredly and smiled.

“You’re here early,” he said. “Not even eight o’clock.”

“Early rounds, patients to see,” she replied. “I was particularly eager to make sure this one had a good night. She’s on the news, did you know?”

“No, haven’t seen any news,” Peter mumbled as he rubbed his face with his free hand. “What are they saying?”

“The facts, that a senior policewoman was assaulted near where those other assaults occurred and that police believe it was the same man-”

“They haven’t released her name or photograph or anything, right?” Peter asked as it suddenly occurred to him that if that happened it could be very bad for security.

“Not that I noticed.”

“Good,” he said, sighing in relief. “We’re not the sort of cops who get our names published in the paper. Or anywhere. How is she? The nurses have been positive, and she’s moving a lot-”

“I’m very pleased,” Doctor Davis said as she carried the file alongside Ellen’s bedside to look down upon the patient. “Her temperature was at its highest just after she was brought in last night, and it’s since come down to be consistently normal. Her blood pressure is on the low side of normal. I’m going to have the nurse ready some medium-strength pain relief and some anti-nausea drugs, because it’s highly likely that Ellen will wake up within the next few hours with a very bad headache-”

“Headache, dizziness, all that,” Peter said as he nodded and remembered his own experience with concussion over the years. “Do we just let her wake up naturally?”

“From this point, yes,” Doctor Davis said, just as Ellen raised her left knee and frowned deeply in sleep. It was almost as though she was trying to roll over, but decided against it and settled on a deep breath. “I don’t think it will take long,” she said. “The movement is very positive, but we will keep the collar on until she’s on her feet. It’s not hurting her. Press the call button as soon as she wakes up, and if the first thing she wants to do is throw up, use that bowl on her bedside table near you.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Peter said with a chuckle as she smirked at him and left. Peter reached for the bowl. It looked incredibly small and too shallow for a good spew, but then again Ellen would have an empty stomach; she’d had no food and water since mid-afternoon the previous day. Peter put the bowl nearer to him on the mattress so that he could grab it if need be. “Did you hear all that?” he asked Ellen as he gave her hand a light squeeze. 

Peter let go of her hand to stand and stretch. It had been a few hours since his last stretch and his last wander down the hall to the toilet and nearby water station. He was gathering a nice collection of little paper cups, but at least he was hydrated and had managed to nap on and off beside Ellen as she rested. He smiled at the colour in her smooth, creamy cheeks. The furrow in her brow remained and Peter assumed it was because her body was awake enough to know that it was in pain. He touched his hand to her hairline and gently combed her dark hair back off her forehead, from her temples to her ears, one side at a time. 

“Knock-knock,” came a whisper behind him. Peter turned expectantly as he recognised the voice, and he smiled when he saw Danni enter. She cast a wary glance over her shoulder, and Peter knew it was because she was early; general visiting hours began at nine a.m. “How is she?” Danni asked eagerly. 

As if Ellen wanted to make sure she answered that question, she groaned, moved one of her legs, and flopped her arm out again, towards where Peter had been sitting. 

“She’s coming to,” Peter answered with a grateful smile into Danni’s suddenly relieved eyes. He reached for Ellen’s stray hand again and kept hold of it while he stood at her bedside. His other hand massaged up and down her bare forearm, and Ellen sighed deeply as she relaxed back into the bed. 

“Oh thank God,” Danni said softly. She had braced herself at the foot of Ellen’s bed. “You had a good night then?”

“Mac did. The neck brace is being left on as a precaution but she’s been ticking all the boxes and having a great old sleep. It wasn’t one of my greatest nights but it was a far cry from what you and I were probably both imagining twelve hours ago.”

“Oh, yes,” Danni agreed with wide green eyes as she nodded. “Can I sit with her?”

“Sure. I’ll go for a wander. The only instructions are if she comes to while I’m in the loo, you have to press the call button on the other side of the bed immediately because she needs painkillers, and if she wakes up and immediately has to throw up, that’s what the bowl is for. I guess they want to talk to her first and make sure she can respond before they give her pain relief though, cos they’re waiting til she’s up.”

“Got it,” Danni said as she chuckled. She grinned as she watched Peter brush his fingers through Ellen’s hairline a few more times. He leant over and kissed her forehead before he left, and she wondered if he had been doing that every time he had to turn his back throughout the night. 

“I won’t be long,” he told them both. 

Danni was relieved to be able to sit beside Ellen after a restless night spent worrying about her. Peter hadn’t called with bad news, but what if Ellen had deteriorated anyway? Thankfully that was not the case, and Danni could not be happier to be able to hold Ellen’s hand and to feel that hand warm and moving. 

“Shh, it’s okay,” she said, quietly soothing Ellen as Ellen emitted a pained sigh, almost a half-sob. “All you have to do if you want something for the pain is open your eyes and say hi,” Danni added on a half-laugh as she looked at the deep furrow in Ellen’s brow and her dry, softly parted lips. Ellen’s breathing remained steady and deep though, and Danni thought perhaps she was in that deep-asleep-but-half-awake space of early mornings after long nights, a place where she consciously was aware that she was asleep and maybe dreaming, but she wasn’t yet able to wake herself up. 

“Back,” Peter said after several minutes. He had returned with two small paper cups of water, and handed one to Danni. With Danni in his chair, he perched on the mattress near Ellen’s legs. They sipped their water quietly until Danni spoke.

“They released a statement to the news,” she said. “It’s so strange, hearing that and knowing they’re talking about us, about Mac.”

“I think she might be the first of us to even make the news,” Peter said, suddenly thoughtful as he frowned and scanned his memory. He soon chuckled and rubbed Ellen’s nearest knee. “I guess some people will do anything for fame, eh Mac?”


	19. Chapter 19

NINETEEN

The solid pounding at Ellen’s temples became more manageable once the nurse injected some kind of potent painkiller into the IV line. The room stopped tilting back and forth, and she was able to open her eyes again. She was lying on her side and Peter was standing directly in front of her. He was holding one of her hands to the mattress and holding one of his hands against her head, trying to reassure her that she was still and the world wasn’t moving and she should stay calm. 

“Will it knock her out again?” he asked the nurse standing beside him, as she gently returned Ellen’s upper arm to a more comfortable position and made sure the IV line wasn’t in a position to be tugged. There was a twinge here and there, and Ellen shut her eyes and sighed. She relaxed her hand beneath Peter’s and felt him readjust so that he was holding her fingers with more affection. He began stroking his fingers through her hair too, and Ellen wanted to make a big joke about how if he didn’t want her falling asleep again he probably shouldn’t do that. She just didn’t have the energy yet.

“No, but she might eventually drift off for more rest now that the pain’s taken care of. I know there are police wanting to speak to her, I’m sure they will be here at nine a.m. on the dot, but it really should wait until later today, if possible.”

“I agree. You have my full permission to tell them – in as stern a voice as you need – that Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie will call them in when she’s good and ready, thank you very much,” Peter quipped. The nurse chuckled and Ellen rolled her eyes and scoffed. 

“Such a charmer,” she mumbled. 

Peter smiled as he kept hold of her hand but drew his chair back towards the bed and sat down. Ellen watched him through tired, dry eyes with a muted, closed-lip smile. 

“Feeling better?” he asked. “You just got a hit of the good stuff.”

“Mm, works fast. Less pain, less tilting,” she said. “Chatting up the nurses, Peter?”

“Oh yeah, I’m having a blast,” Peter told her without any humour in his eyes, except the subtle good humour directed at her, as he grimaced and opened his eyes wide. Ellen huffed and as tears welled in her eyes she shut her eyes and gave his hand a squeeze. She squeezed up her face a little too. “You’re okay mate,” Peter whispered. 

“I hate hospitals,” she said on a teary sigh. “That is where I am, right?”

“Yep. You haven’t been in one of these places since we accidentally lost you on a job and you got loaded up on general anaesthetic. When was that? Years ago now.”

“Least I kept my kidneys,” Ellen quipped as she opened her eyes again. Peter chuckled and nodded. He leant forward to put both elbows on the edges of the mattress, while he lifted Ellen’s hand and kissed it. He lay his cheek against the top of her hand and looked at her afterwards, as she moved her fingers slightly in his, trying to comfort him. “Peter,” she said cautiously. “Um…what’s around my neck?”

“I’m told it is the most comfortable spinal collar they’ve got-but-” He spoke quickly as Ellen’s deep blue eyes went wide and her cheeks paled. “But you’re okay. You’ve been scanned and x-rayed and you rolled onto your side like this all by yourself-”

“It was the only position that stopped me throwing up and passing out.”

“The doctor was just concerned about the level of bruising and swelling they could see and feel around your neck, just in the hours after they brought you in, so even though the scan cleared you of major damage, it’s just to give you some extra support until you’re on your feet and they’re more confident to remove it. Does it hurt?”

“No,” she said. She lifted the hand with the IV in it to touch along the lightweight brace. It felt smaller than she had assumed. “It’s okay, just feels very strange.”

“You remember what happened to Kiera?” Peter asked. “She was brought to this hospital, you had some of the same medical staff looking after you…everyone’s a bit raw about what happened yesterday. And you, my friend, came in on a backboard.”

“Oh great,” Ellen groaned as she shut her eyes. 

“It is pretty great, actually,” Peter said as he grinned and tapped her nose with a finger, forcing her eyes open. “Because look at you, lying on your side talking and awake, after spending the last few hours wriggling around in this bed. It was driving me bloody crazy, but I was also very relieved, cos it meant your spine was okay, your brain was okay, and that collar will be off before sunset today. You’re doing well.”

“What happened?” Ellen finally asked. She bit her bottom lip as Peter kissed the top of her hand again, before grasping it comfortably between both of this on the bed. 

“How much do you remember, beautiful?”

“Not a lot,” Ellen said as tears filled her eyes once more. “I’m sorry, I…since I woke up and realised where I was, I’ve been trying…my head’s so hazy.”

“Take your time, there’s no rush,” Peter whispered.

“Cos Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie will call them in when she’s good and ready?” she echoed. She smirked at him when he glared at her, and then she laughed. “Have you been here the whole time?” she asked more softly when she saw how tired he looked. His eyes were bleary and he hadn’t shaved. He nodded, and she moved her hand around until their fingers were laced together. “Thank you,” she whispered. 

“This is the first time you’ve been conscious since last night, since it happened,” he explained. “We were worried, they didn’t have a chance of getting rid of me.”

“I’m just glad I remember my life and who I am,” Ellen said on a pained sigh as she shut her eyes for a second. “Oh, breakfast,” she said. She looked at him pointedly. “We missed our Friday breakfast. And my mum and sister…what day is it?”

“Friday,” Peter said. He could not be happier that looking into those eyes he saw merely a hazy veil covering the highly intelligent and switched-on individual who he cared about more than any other. “It’s technically still breakfast time,” he went on. “Eight-thirty. We just don’t have food. As for your mum and sister and our plans for Saturday night, no one has called them. Your mobile phone is, I assume, in your car, which may or may not be exactly where we left it.”

“And the van?”

“Sex Crimes and Jeff’s fellas took that one over, Danni let ‘em in.”

“Fine, fine,” Ellen sighed. “Don’t call my mum, that’s weird, because…well she’s not my real mum, even though she is, but I never-”

“How about we make sure that mobile phone gets to you today,” Peter told her. “Then you can text this sister to let her know…is it Amy? Because I do not think you will be making that art exhibition tomorrow night. You’ve got a decent concussion, Elle.”

“Amy, yeah,” Ellen said. “And concussion, ya-a-ay. That’s a first. Phone please.”

“We’ll find it,” he said. 

“Peter, sweetheart, when can I go home?” she asked. 

Peter chuckled and shook his head. He leant so close to her that she had no other option but to look straight into his bemused, mockingly stern blue eyes.

“You can go home when the good doctors and nurses here say you can go home. Maybe tomorrow morning, if you’re good and as lucky as you have been so far, but don’t think calling me sweetheart is going to earn you any bonus leaving points.”

“Damn,” she said, playfully glaring at him as a wave of tiredness swept over her and she sighed deeply. Her eyes fell shut and Peter started stroking her hair again. “Peter,” she said more softly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry sweetheart.”

“What for?” he asked. He looked over his shoulder to see Danni still leaning against the wall by the doorway. She had gotten out of the way when the nurse came in and had been quietly standing there ever since. They exchanged a soft smile before Peter returned his attention back to Ellen. As far as he knew, she hadn’t even seen Danni. 

“I’m sorry I was almost like Alice and Christina,” Ellen continued, eyes shut. “I tried so hard not to be. I tried to stop it. I don’t want to die yet.”

“Ellie, Alice and Christina were shot-”

“I could’ve easily been shot. I only see flashes, but happened so quick, then nothing.”

“I’m not even going to imagine that happening, Mac. I would have been devastated.”

“You loved them. I know I’m not them and third choice alive. It’s not fair. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Peter said, though he had no idea where this conversation was coming from inside her head. Maybe she had wanted to talk to him about this for years and the voice of Bernie Rocca had been in her ear rabbiting on about professionalism and the fact that it was Peter’s business and he wouldn’t want to talk about his two murdered fiancées, one of whom was a policewoman too. 

It wasn’t just his business, though. Deep down she knew that, as well as she knew that Bernie was wrong to have driven a wedge between them, and maybe it just took very strong painkillers, a fear of dying, and a good knock on the head for her to bring it up. 

“Elle,” he explained. “We’ll talk more about this when you’re better, okay? But you are not my third choice. That’s not true. I loved Alice and Christina at different times in my life; Alice before I met you and Tina right after you told me I couldn’t be with you. You’re not less than them somehow because you survived. I mean, it’s probably an unlucky thing for you because if I’ve now known you twice the time I knew Alice and Tina, combined, that means you’ve had to put up with me all that time too.” 

Ellen smirked, half-asleep or faking, as Peter persevered. What he wanted to say had pushed tears into his own tired eyes and caused his voice to shake and crack. 

“This is it for me, has been for ages, you get that?” When she nodded and her eyes fluttered open, he added, “And if it ever happens, if you get shot and die as well – because I warn you, I may be cursed – you must never in your soul feel like you owe me an apology for that happening, okay? Promise me that? You won’t owe me anything, beautiful, you never did. You promise, Mac?”

“Okay,” she said on a musical sigh as she started drifting to sleep under his touch. 

“And this time, you weren’t shot,” Peter continued firmly as he looked again at closed eyes. “You’re doing so well. No one’s dying anytime soon, not me, not you. Okay?”

“This is pretty good breakfast conversation,” she mumbled. “Even if no pancakes.”

“Oh yeah, this is Friday breakfast in all its glory,” Peter teased, chuckling as her cheeks flushed a brighter shade of pink than they would have if she wasn’t on such strong medication. His heart was beating furiously in his chest as he watched over her. Her hair was cool beneath his fingers but her hand was warm. She was okay.

“Peter,” she added. “I hate that we talk like this. I’m sick of being in a job where one of us might die. I don’t think you’re cursed…I won’t let you go again, I promise. I just want to live with you. Living.”

“We can do that,” he said softly. “We can do whatever you want.” He bit his bottom lip and looked more closely at her peaceful face. “Are you awake, Ellen?” he asked. 

“Mm, yes,” she answered, nodding as best she could in the collar. “Not soon, damn drugs. Don’t forget my phone, must call Amy, and make sure I wake up, Pete please.”

“We’ll get your phone so you can tell your sister,” he said. He stretched up and over to kiss her on the corner of her mouth and cheek, before sitting back down. “Go to sleep, you big chicken,” he ordered. “Nothing bad is gonna happen, I’m right here.”

“I’m in love with you. I need to tell you now, right now, I don’t want to-”

“Shh, I know. Don’t panic now, you’re okay,” Peter said. His eyes welled with tears when he saw her brow furrowed. She didn’t want to go back to sleep, she was scared. Say it now, she was probably thinking, in case she didn’t wake up and never could. Being in hospital terrified her, and he had never actually figured out why. Perhaps there was a story there and he might learn it one day. “I’ve got you Mac,” he simply said in the meantime as he held her hand tightly and stroked her hair. “You’re safe.”

“So,” Danni said softly once Ellen’s breathing softened and she visibly relaxed into her pillows and the mattress. Danni walked closer and into what would have been Ellen’s range of vision. “Was that a glimpse of Mac’s true self?”

“Close enough,” Peter said softly. 

“Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt, not when the nurse was here too. You don’t mind that I stayed?”

“No, it’s fine. She’s half out of her mind on painkillers with a serious concussion anyway, so you know, just take everything she said with a grain of salt.”

“Ahuh,” Danni said with a disbelieving smirk as she leant her hip against the side of the bed and looked down into his guarded expression. “So…when’s the wedding?”

“Oh stop it,” he huffed, rolling his eyes. 

Danni leant forward and gave his shoulder a squeeze as she chuckled, amused by her own teasing. 

“How about I go and find us some pastries and coffee,” she suggested. “And I’ll give Angie and Oscar a call to let them know she was conscious but has gone back to sleep…we might try and get that phone sorted. I didn’t know Mac had a sister.”

“Mac’s adopted, this is her biological family,” Peter said. “That’s all I’ll say.”

“Wow, she kept that one under wraps,” Danni said softly as she stood upright. “But fair enough. We’ll find it, okay? You sit, relax, leave it to us.” She went to leave but stopped at the door and turned back. “Oh,” she hissed. “And I’ll see about getting your reading glasses out of the van so you can do sentimental old man things like read the newspaper while she sleeps. I’ll bring one of those too, shall I?”

“Bugger off,” Peter said as they grinned at each other. He chuckled as Danni winked at him before she really did disappear. She was just relieved that Ellen was okay, he reasoned, and probably quite tickled at the conversation she had just witnessed. Peter didn’t mind, though. She was a friend who had been up all night worrying that filling in a logbook might have meant that Ellen never woke up. It was a tortuous thought.

*

“Drive safely,” Angie said as she hugged Shirley goodbye on the footpath outside Oscar’s house. “And have fun. You know we’re both only a phone call away.”

“Thank you darling,” Shirley said as they parted and smiled at each other. Shirley sighed and touched Angie’s cheek affectionately. “I do hope she’s as nice as you.”

“Ha, good luck with that,” Charlie said doubtfully as Oscar opened the passenger side of the SUV for him to climb into. “Probably some rich bimbo manipulating him for fun, cos he’s easy prey. Should’ve made him stronger.”

“Sure dad,” Oscar said agreeably as he watched Charlie get in.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s coming, she’s just saying goodbye to Angie.”

Charlie scoffed and rolled his eyes as Oscar shot a look of exasperation over his shoulder in their direction.

Shirley grinned at Angie and added quietly, “Oh, it’s going to be a long drive. Bye sweetheart. I hope to see you again very soon.”

Angie chuckled and nodded as she released Shirley and allowed her to say goodbye to her eldest son. Oscar leant down for a warm hug and kissed Shirley’s cheek. 

“Bye mum,” he said. “Drive safely.”

“Yes, I will. Are those two words part of police training or something?”

“Yes,” Oscar said in all seriousness as he stared at her pointedly. “I thought they were also part of standard mother training, since I heard it enough growing up from you.”

Angie’s phone rang in the front pocket of her jeans and that ended the conversation, as she removed it, checked the caller ID, and quickly answered. 

“Danni, hi. News?” she asked. Angie met Oscar’s wary, hopeful eyes as she listened to Danni speaking. She broke into a smile as she nodded. “Ahuh, yeah we’re just seeing off Shirley and Charlie, we can meet you there in half an hour. Bye.”

“Mac?” Oscar asked once she hung up. 

“We have to meet Danni at the scene to coordinate moving Mac’s car and to retrieve the communications van,” Angie explained, before she grinned broadly and added, “Mac’s been awake; she’s moving, talking, and she says she remembers her life.”

“Yes!” Oscar exclaimed as he gave his mum another squeeze. As soon as she left he would do the same to Angie. He was in an optimistic mood. Things were looking up!


	20. Chapter 20

TWENTY

“Hey,” Ellen said when she saw Oscar cautiously walk into her hospital room ahead of Angie and look around for her. They had moved her to a more private room because for the past two hours of the early afternoon, in which she had managed to stay awake, there had been a steady stream of police coming in and out, some in uniform and some in plain clothes, some needing detailed statements and some just wanting to crack a joke and take Danni out to lunch as per the original plan. 

“Mac,” Angie said happily as she and Oscar approached the slightly raised head of the bed and took the two available seats. “They told us you were awake. How are you?”

“On super-strong painkillers but okay,” she said. “Oscar, what are you doing here? There’s nothing wrong with the part of my memory that says you’re meant to be on your way to your parent’s property.”

“I’m packed,” he assured her. “Mum and dad took off this morning. I just wanted to make sure you were okay before I took off for two weeks.” 

“Oh,” Ellen said. She blushed and rolled her eyes skywards at herself. “Don’t worry about me. Massive headache but I’ll live, as long as we all talk in our indoor voices.”

“Have you spoken to Jeff?” Angie asked as she reached out and tentatively laid a comforting hand on Ellen’s wrist. 

They only really touched on special occasions, like hugs at birthday parties or if someone was very upset, but Angie wanted to reach out and let Ellen know not to be so flippant or to blame herself if Oscar stayed longer. Ellen’s deep blue eyes flickered briefly in Angie’s direction and she offered Angie a short smile at the touch; she was tired and her eyelids looked heavy, so Angie kept her hand where it was. 

“I did, I told him what I could remember, which at this stage is just flashes or chunks of fractions of a second.”

“What do you remember?” Oscar asked. Angie glared at him and he cleared his throat before adding, “I mean, I know you’ve probably told this to everyone a dozen times today-”

“Just two times,” Ellen said. “I remember having my ponytail pulled back, so that piece of costuming worked. I remember the way his arm jerked shoving my head back into the car, and the way he tripped over his long legs when I stayed down low and swept them out from under him.”

“Go Mac!” Oscar said with a wry chuckle as she grinned playfully. 

“And…my forearms are really sore because I managed to get them under my face once I was on the ground, to stop him bashing my face into the concrete. That’s why my nose isn’t broken and I’m told my face isn’t badly bruised?”

“You look a little flushed is all,” Angie said softly.

“Mm,” Ellen said on a hum. “I remember trying to push myself up and turn around when I got the chance, but he grabbed me by the neck or hair and I’m turning my head, and I think that’s how Kiera might have broken her neck, trying to get away like I was. And…I know I ended up on my back and we struggled. I remember thinking the wire might still be on, so I called for Peter. At least I think I called out his name. I was just trying to give them time to get to me. I don’t think I was scared, then, it was almost just mechanical, or instinct I guess. I remember two hands on either side of my head. Up like a watermelon and then…nothing. I don’t know what happened then.”

“Oh Mac, the wire was off-”

“I know, I know,” Ellen assured them when she saw their panicked faces. “I only just got rid of Peter an hour ago, he and I spent an hour speaking to Jeff and the guys from Sex Crimes, giving them both our statements, and they already had Danni’s. She’s been here all morning as well-”

“Where are they?” Oscar asked.

“Peter is hopefully showering, having a decent meal, and taking a nap at home,” Ellen said. “Danni has gone to lunch with Neil Underwood, the Head of Homicide, to talk about job opportunities. I was meant to be there too, but obviously he heard what happened and came by…I’m the talk of headquarters, by the sounds of it. I hope they’re not saying I should never have been undercover because of my position…”

“I’m sure they’re not,” Angie said. “No one who knows what you’re like as an undercover cop would ever question it. You were attacked from behind, you fought back really hard, and just by you doing that, you probably frustrated or panicked him into running sooner, not hurting you any worse once you were knocked out. And uh…you weren’t, I mean, he didn’t hurt you any other way? No sexual assault?”

“I’m told not,” Ellen said softly as her eyes skirted to Oscar to make sure he was all right. “But I don’t actually know. I don’t think there was the time. It was seconds.” 

Oscar just looked relieved and his eyes clouded over with a vague expression. 

“Oh good, let’s trust what the doctors say then and assume not,” Angie said as she squeezed Ellen’s wrist and smiled. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Mac-”

“Not you too,” Ellen said with a wry huff. “Don’t be sorry Angie, you had the night off; I gave you the night off. Jeff even offered me extra backup yesterday morning and I turned him down, all right? You couldn’t have done anything.”

“He offered extra backup after Kiera?” Angie asked.

“Yes, and it’s a measure of the man that he hasn’t rubbed it in my face yet.”

“Did you see who did it?” Oscar asked. “Do they know who they’re looking for?”

“Tall man, thin legs, a dark beard, I think brown eyes but he was backlit by a streetlight so it was hard to tell…dark pants, I think those tights they call skins, or some kind of lycra running pants. I heard he’s now in possession of my hat.”

“He was, the last time Danni saw him,” Angie confirmed as Ellen smirked. 

“The good news,” Ellen said. “Is that Jeff thinks they might have fingerprints. Apparently Danni and Peter both saw him emerge from between two cars just a bit further along, before he ran, and perhaps he’d scurried away alongside and between the cars in the seconds after he left me…last night they dusted the cars for prints and found some in unusual, dry places. They’re running them through the database now.”

“Oh, that’s awesome,” Oscar said softly with wide eyes. “Imagine if it was that easy, after all this?”

“He always attacked women in the park,” Ellen explained tiredly as she stifled a yawn. “There was nothing he could leave prints on, always careful not to touch mp3 players and those sorts of things. He came after me on the street; maybe he didn’t even realise he was holding onto the trunk of a car for balance before he started running, you know? We’ll see. Jeff is hopeful of a result today or tomorrow.”

“Did this guy say anything to you?” Angie asked. “Did he find your earpiece or did he know you were a cop?”

“He said nothing,” Ellen said on a sigh. “My earpiece was still taped in when I got to hospital – at least I’m told it was – and no one really knows if my cover was blown or if this was just another opportunistic thing…if he’s the one who also attacked Kiera then he’d already been operating outside of his usual M.O. that day. Maybe the park isn’t so important to him anymore, but he still came back for me.”

“Well that makes it harder,” Oscar said. 

“Mm,” Ellen hummed. “Either way, we’ll have to see what we’re left with when I get out of here, and as much as I’d love it to be today…my head really hurts and they have really good drugs here, so I might stay ‘til tomorrow.” She pouted and pulled a face that made Angie and Oscar both laugh. 

“Yes, you should rest,” Angie said as she watched Ellen briefly close her eyes. “Sleepy?”

“Not exactly, more foggy. Had some vertigo; that was fun. I’m just so glad I remember everything, or at least most things. Oscar, you should go to your farm.”

“What if you need help?” Oscar asked. “Extra help packing up the factory or-”

“Oscar, you should go to your farm,” Ellen repeated softly but firmly. “We’re fine. You’ll be back for the final stages anyway, right? And to finalise a transfer?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Okay Mac, I’ll go. I just didn’t want to be leaving if you were going to, well, you know-”

“Die,” Ellen finished for him. She leveled him with a wise and accepting smirk as he blushed. “I understand,” she said softly. “Thank you, but I think I’ll be okay.”

“Good,” he said in earnest. He glanced at Angie who raised her eyebrows at him, before he said, “I might go for a wander. I’ll be back to say goodbye okay?”

“Okay. If I’m asleep, goodbye in advance,” Ellen quipped. Oscar chuckled and surprised her by standing and leaning over her bed, to quickly kiss her on the cheek. He soon left Ellen alone with Angie, and the two women smiled at each other as Angie pulled her chair a little closer. She had let go of Ellen’s wrist but was still sitting forward as Ellen’s eyes were turned towards her.

“When’s the collar coming off your neck?” Angie asked. “It must limit movement.”

“I believe that’s the point of it,” Ellen said. She sighed and added, “No idea, to be honest. I can walk, I did shuffle to the toilet before, with like three people around me, so who knows. I’d like it off but also I don’t really want it off yet. Maybe when the doctor turns up tonight for my checkup.” 

“I didn’t think I’d be able to get you on your own today, I must admit,” Angie said as she looked around. “Nice room.”

“Nice when it’s not filled with cops asking me questions like I’m not a fucking cop,” Ellen said with a slight frown as Angie chuckled. 

“Mac, by the sounds of it you did everything right last night. We can add to that description now, you probably scared him off calling for Peter…I wouldn’t worry about however they spoke to you, and now you’ve told them everything you can sit back and relax.”

“I haven’t been relaxed in months Angie,” Ellen said on a sigh. “Years. I have so much work to do, work I should be doing today. I just can’t switch off. Peter is now telling me that it’s a good thing because it means my brain is okay. Gee, thanks Church. I know I’m lucky, but it doesn’t stop me also knowing I’m too busy for this.”

“Can I talk about something non-work-related with you then?” she asked. “Maybe that will distract you.”

“Okay,” Ellen said on a wary sigh as she looked into Angie’s light blue eyes. “What?”

“I wouldn’t tell you ordinarily, but we don’t really work together anymore and we’re friends, right? I wouldn’t mind your advice.”

“As…as a friend?” Ellen asked as her eyes went wide and her lips parted in surprise.

“Yeah,” Angie said, laughing. “Oh Mac, don’t look like that. Of course. Can I?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Okay,” Angie said. She leant further forward so that she could lower her voice to a whisper, and so that Ellen could see the hopeful wince on her face. “Oscar and I kind of slept together last night. Uh…two or three times.”

“You’re not sure?” Ellen asked with a pert raised eyebrow. Angie’s face flushed and her fair cheeks turned bright red as she looked at Ellen, who was doing her best not to smirk. 

“Okay, okay, three times,” Angie hissed, as Ellen chuckled to herself. “It wasn’t a one night thing, but we’re not dating, and I think it’s because, well…we both want a family, we want children and just to be regular cops again for awhile. We agreed that we’re going to see if that’s something we can do together…probably several hours away from the city, closer to Oscar’s parents. His dad’s got a bit of Alzheimer’s setting in, we think. I really want it to work, he does too. What do you think?”

“I’m sorry about his dad,” Ellen said gently as her eyes were full of thought and emotion. She had been bemused even while she had been surprised at Angie declaring that they had slept together, because frankly it had been a long time coming, but it sounded like it could become a very serious relationship very quickly, and that stunned her. Maybe it already was a serious relationship? Ellen hadn’t known that Angie and Oscar wanted children so badly, or that their relationship was close enough that they had talked about it and made some kind of agreement without even dating. 

“Charlie’s a good man, underneath,” Angie said softly. “He’s had a rocky relationship with his sons over the years, but you could say the same of me and mum.”

“Mm,” Ellen hummed. “Um, you want to know what I think?”

“I want to know if you think we’re being ridiculously stupid,” Angie said. “Is it crazy for us to want to have kids together in the next few years? We don’t know each other outside work-”

“I think you do now,” Ellen pointed out with wide eyes and a pointed glare. 

Angie giggled softly and nodded, conceding that point. 

“Do you love each other?” Ellen asked her. 

“Yeah we do,” Angie said softly, still nodding. She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t think I’m in love with him…I don’t think he’s in love with me, but we love each other. I think I could fall in love with him more very easily. He said he’s always kind of thought of me as being the mother of his kids, and he was really embarrassed but I said I’d always kind of thought the same, even though…even though most of the time over the last eight years, I really just saw him a bit like a brother. It’s hard to explain.”

“No, it’s fine,” Ellen whispered. She shivered and fought back tears because she didn’t want Angie to see her getting emotional about this. Her own fucked-up emotional life wasn’t Angie’s problem. “If you love each other, and if you both have the same vision for your future…then it is never going to be ridiculously stupid.”

“Really?” Angie asked with raised eyebrows. 

“I know what good friends you are,” Ellen said. “I’ve known you years in this job, since I hired the pair of you. You know each other better than you think, and you’re better suited than you probably know. If you already know that you love him and you see him in your future, then if you let yourself you’ll fall in love with him too…and if you’re waiting for my permission to do that because I’m the boss, then you have it.”

“Can I have some of those painkillers you’re on? You just said the word love like four times in a minute without even blinking!” Angie teased with a soft laugh. 

Ellen mock-glared at her, even though her heart sank in her chest. Everyone thought she was so cold; no one gave her any credit for having feelings, all because of her bloody job and who she had to be. But she had been trying so hard in recent months to fix that, she had really opened up at her birthday party and it was just the other night; didn’t anyone remember her then? She tried very hard to keep her voice from shaking.

“I thought we were having a serious conversation, Angie. You asked me as a friend, remember?”

“Sorry, I’m sorry Mac. I’m just a little…on edge.”

“I know what love is,” Ellen said on a sad whisper as she looked away, unable to stop the dull clench of her heart or to help the tears from coming to her eyes. “I think you’re lucky.”

“Oh Mac, please don’t cry,” Angie said. She dug her teeth into her bottom lip and watched as Ellen shook her head and took a deep breath even despite the collar around her neck. It was hard to see, with her shoulder-length hair out and tossed around it, but it was still there and Angie knew how frustrated Ellen was by it. She also knew that Ellen was probably lonely. She didn’t have anyone, or any of the plans that Angie was telling her about, but of course Ellen could talk of love. 

“Are you going to go with Oscar then?” Ellen asked. She looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds to gather her emotions, before turning to look straight into Angie’s eyes, still hurt, but serious and guarded and professional once more. “Two weeks?”

“I’d like to,” Angie mumbled. “But I don’t have to. Maybe just for some of the time. We could drive each other crazy.”

“That could be a good thing,” Ellen said on a sigh. She shut her eyes and tried to will herself back to sleep. She was happy for them, but felt intensely sad. She had not been expecting the conversation to go that way, not right then, not that day. “Okay, go.”

“Really?” Angie asked. Ellen nodded and took a deep, slow breath. “Mac, are you-”

“I’m sure, just go. I’m really tired Angie. I’m sorry, I need to sleep these meds off.”

“Okay,” Angie said gently. “Mac, I’m sorry.” But Ellen didn’t answer.


	21. Chapter 21

TWENTY-ONE

Peter opened the front door of his house and stared at Oscar and Angie curiously. 

“Uh…hi,” he said. “I didn’t know you knew where I lived.”

“We didn’t know you were selling,” Oscar replied, pointing to the For Sale behind him. “Were you gonna tell us?”

“Yeah, once it sold,” Peter said. “I’ve had a couple of offers, but there’s an open house tomorrow so I’m just tidying up. Mac ordered me out for a couple hours.”

“Can we come in?” Angie asked. 

“Uh…sure,” Peter said. He stepped back and held the door open and watched them both walk in ahead of him. “What can I do for you on this fine, Friday afternoon? You heading off soon Oscar?”

“Yeah,” Oscar said. He watched Peter walk ahead into the kitchen area to put the jug on. “We both are, actually,” Oscar added. 

Peter stopped what he was doing and slowly turned back towards them, mouth agape. 

“You both are?” he asked. “Everything okay up at your folk’s place?”

“Oh yeah,” Oscar said with an easygoing nod. “Ange and I just have some stuff we want to work out, and two weeks should just about do it.”

Peter looked between them. Angie’s expression was hesitant but guarded, and Oscar was equally as hard to read. 

“You…have stuff to work out,” Peter repeated doubtfully. 

“Personal stuff,” Oscar said.

“Right,” Peter replied on a drawl. He leant against the kitchen bench and smirked at them. “Um…thanks for telling me?”

Angie sighed and rolled her eyes as Peter chuckled.

“We’re not here just for the sake of it,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that when I told Mac I think I accidentally upset her a bit, and she might need a friend back at the hospital this afternoon.”

“What did you say?” Peter asked as he raised his eyebrow. He tried not to fidget. He didn’t like the idea that Ellen was upset about what had happened to her and that she wasn’t coping with being stuck in hospital, but there wasn’t much he could really do about any of that. He had been planning to go back within the hour anyway, now that he felt fresher after a shave and some proper food. 

“Nothing bad,” Angie replied as she wandered into the kitchen and perched on one of the stools on the other side of the bench. “We were having a chat about, well, personal stuff, and I asked her advice on something. She was being really honest and genuine and it caught me so off-guard that I cracked a joke. I don’t think she took it well.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Peter said, reassuring her with a smile when he saw Angie blushing and wincing and generally looking worried and uncomfortable. “Mac’s on a lot of meds and she’s feeling pretty fragile. She’s been talking non-stop to coppers and she should be sleeping. I’ll head over later and make sure she’s doing okay.”

“Oh good,” Angie said with a sigh of relief. “Thank you Peter.”

“Wanna stay for a cuppa before you leave?” he asked. “Have you spoken to Danni?”

“I left a message, she hasn’t called back. She’s with the Head of Homicide guy so, who knows, maybe she’s about to accept a job. If she’s still with him it’s been a long meeting, I thought it was meant to be a lunch thing?”

Peter shrugged because he hadn’t heard from Danni either. He had been sitting with her beside Ellen when Neil arrived to say hello, wish Ellen well, and steal Danni away for their scheduled meeting regardless. The fact he was so keen told Peter that Ellen had really talked Danni up to the guy, and that Neil was someone who put a lot of stock in Ellen’s judgment. Peter did not doubt it either; Danni would be an excellent Detective if given half a chance, and if she dreamed about Homicide then she deserved to take her chances there. 

“She’ll call us when she’s free,” Peter said. He returned to making tea and coffee. 

“So where are you moving to mate?” Oscar asked as he also settled in on a stool beside Angie. “Not far?”

“Dunno yet,” Peter said. “It depends what happens with work, with the Taskforce, all that stuff.”

“Will you just rent in the meantime?”

“Narr mate, I’m going on a holiday! Travelling!” Peter said with an excited grin. “It’s still in the planning phase, but I reckon I’ll take off for about a month after the factory closes, maybe closer to two. We’ll see.”

“Lucky you,” Oscar said. 

“It’s called Long Service Leave,” Peter said with a smirk. “I know it’s a foreign concept to all of us but it does exist. You both are what, mid-thirties? You’ve been cops since you were nineteen…you’d have yours sitting there too.”

“I’m saving it,” Angie said as she laughed. “For, I dunno, a special occasion.”

“Right, well I’m done saving mine. So long, suckers!” Peter exclaimed just as the jug boiled. Oscar and Angie laughed along with him while he poured their drinks with a big smile on his face. 

“You look happy, Peter,” Angie said. 

“I am. Hopefully I’m gonna sell this house over the weekend, one way or the other, and Mac’s doing bloody awesome compared to what Danni and I thought last night when we found her, and my other two friends are in loooove-”

“Shh!” Angie hissed wide-eyed as Oscar chuckled. She kicked him in the shin.

“Ow, what did I do?” he asked. 

“I’m just kidding,” Peter said with a laugh as he looked between them. “You two are still good value for laughs.”

“Gee, thanks,” Oscar said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He nevertheless accepted his drink from Peter with a polite thank you and Angie did the same. 

Peter smirked as he watched them both quaintly sip their hot drinks and say nothing. 

*

He walked into Ellen’s hospital room an hour and a half later expecting Ellen to be alone, but instead she was sitting with two women. One was Danni, who jumped out of her chair when she saw him and announced, “Guess who’s going to be a Homicide Detective?” It wasn’t hard to guess. Peter laughed and hugged her tightly as she gushed about her meeting and what a good opportunity this was for her, but she didn’t need to justify her decision to him either. 

The other woman with Ellen was much younger. She watched him from her chair with a hesitant, maybe-nervous, maybe-shy expression on her face. Peter did a double-take when he saw her. She had brown eyes and curly brown hair, olive skin, but her face was very similar to the woman Peter had come to see. The shape of her eyes was the same, the way her lips were pressed together as she waited in earnest was the same, and even the way she was sitting at the front end of her chair with her legs crossed while leaning expectantly forward was the same. 

“Amy,” he said before he could stop himself. Danni sat back down and laughed.

“Oh good, half my job is done,” Ellen said from her position propped up by pillows on her semi-raised bed. “Amy, this is Peter.”

“Hi,” Amy said with a tentative smile as she watched him with wide, bright eyes. 

“G’day,” Peter said. He walked around towards her and held his hand out as he smiled. “Really nice to meet you finally.”

“You too,” Amy said. She shook his hand and then bit her bottom lip as she smiled. “Do you want this seat?”

“Pfft. He can get his own seat,” Danni mumbled under her breath, in too good a mood not to tease him.

“Yes, I can,” Peter shot back playfully. He walked to the other side of Ellen’s bed and gestured for her to move over an inch, closer to Amy and Danni’s side. 

Ellen sighed and rolled her eyes but she did shuffle over so that Peter could sit on the mattress beside her. He wiggled himself into position with delight; definitely over-exaggerating how comfortable the bed was in the process, until he was reclining back next to Ellen with his head on the very edge of her pillows. 

“Nice,” he declared with a happy nod as he reached for the controller. “Want to sit a bit more upright Elle?”

“I really don’t,” she said dryly as she slid her eyes towards him. “Enjoying yourself?”

“I am.” He took her nearest hand and held it in both of his. “How are you feeling?”

“Really average,” she said. “But these two have been keeping me company.”

“I came right after uni,” Amy explained to Peter. “Mum knows too. She’s just super busy setting up for the art exhibit, and she thought, like, that Ellen would probably have a lot of people visiting and she didn’t want it to be weird.”

“Ah, that’s okay,” Peter said with an easygoing shrug as he gave Ellen’s hand a squeeze. “It’s really good of you to come, and oh my God you look like your sister. That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, just a bit hey!” Amy said with a laugh. “We’re all darker though on mum’s side; she says Ellen has her dad’s fair skin and blue eyes. Have you seen pictures?”

“There are pictures?” Peter asked as he sat up more and turned back to stare down at Ellen. “No, I haven’t seen any pictures.”

“Oh, you have to! She looks just like him, same cheekbones and colouring and smile.”

“Did you always know she existed?” Danni asked curiously, still new to this idea that her boss and friend was adopted. It didn’t matter, but it definitely added another layer.

“Yes,” Amy said with a wise nod as she looked between Danni and Peter. “Mum ended up marrying Greg when they were like nineteen, and mum had a bunch of miscarriages and they got divorced because, you know, the one baby they did have, um…anyway…my dad is mum’s second husband. Dad’s always known as well.”

“What about your dad?” Danni asked Ellen gently. “Your biological dad.”

“He’s dead,” Ellen said softly. “A cyclist hit by a car fifteen years ago.”

“Yeah, I remember it,” Amy said as she blushed and looked at Danni. “We all went to the funeral, it’s one of my earlier sort of really vivid memories, because I’d never been to a funeral before and I knew him, I’d met him heaps. He and mum stayed in touch and so I…I knew him. Mum was devastated…we still have it, the booklet.”

“That’s sad,” Danni said softly. “Sorry Mac.”

Ellen hummed and nodded. She stared at the top of her free hand and the cannula still taped there for intravenous injections, even though she was no longer on a steady drip. She didn’t really want to talk about Greg. Instead, she looked closely at the thin feeder drip that disappeared beneath her skin into one of her veins. It reminded her of where she was and how much of a fluke it was that she wasn’t dead, and it made her arm go numb and her head swim. Her vision closed in, darkness moved from the outside in. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath as she felt the blood drain from her cheeks. If she was standing in that moment she knew she would have fainted. 

Peter felt Ellen’s hand turn clammy and weak in his grip before he noticed the change in the rest of her. He had been too busy listening to Amy and Danni talking. Ellen had never mentioned her father, and Peter had never asked. Peter hadn’t known that the man had been part of Eve and Amy’s lives before he died…Peter hadn’t even known that he had died. But when he looked over at Ellen and saw how pale her cheeks were that didn’t matter in the moment, and he scrambled off the bed to give her more air. 

“Elle-”

“I’m okay,” she said on a deep breath. “Just made myself faint looking at my hand.”

“Oh, that was smart,” Peter teased gently as he held one hand on her shoulder to hold her still while he grabbed the controller and lowered the bed back down to flat. “Hang on mate, stay with us. You’ll feel better in no time.”

“Thanks Pete. I need, um…to be flat.” She took another deep, nauseated breath.

“Sorry,” Amy said quietly. She bit her bottom lip and leant forward with a youthful sort of fear in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to upset her.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Danni assured her. She laid a friendly hand on Amy’s knee. “Ellen’s just got a fairly serious head injury, she’s covering really well but this could have been a lot worse-”

“I heard it on the news this morning,” Amy admitted softly. “Mum too. We even said, ‘Oh, a senior policewoman, I bet she was there with a bunch of cops trying to keep the area safe and look for this guy, you know in plain clothes.’ I told mum that cops must be really brave sometimes and mum just kind of said yes, and we probably both thought of Ellen then but it never occurred to us that it would actually be Ellen.”

“Please tell her I’m okay,” Ellen said once she was lying flat and able to open her eyes without the darkness closing in on her. She breathed a deep sigh of relief and rolled her eyes skywards, back in her head, as Peter took a moment to brush his fingertips through the loose hair around her temples. He gave her hand a squeeze and she was still shaking, but she did her best to meet his eyes and squeeze back. 

“There we go, it’s okay,” Peter said. He smiled over at Amy. “Elle hates hospitals.”

“I’ve never visited anyone in hospital before,” Amy admitted softly. “But I would have walked out in the middle of my lecture when I got your message Ellen, I was so worried, only I didn’t want to look like your totally desperate and needy little sister.”

“It’s fine,” Ellen assured her with a steadier gaze and smile. “Thank you. Today’s not my best day, but I really am glad you came.”

“Me too,” she said with a hopeful nip at her bottom lip mid-smile. “I should let you rest now though. Um…do you want me to tell mum she can visit, because I think the ‘being busy setting up the exhibition’ is just an excuse – it’s been set up for the past week bit by bit – or do you want to wait until you’re out of hospital anyway?”

“I’ll be out by the end of the weekend,” Ellen said with certainty. “Just tell her I’m okay and that I’ll give her a call. I’m so sorry I’m going to miss the exhibit.”

“I’ll take a few pictures and send them,” Amy promised as she stood and picked up her handbag, bulging with university books and a laptop. “Um…thanks for letting me know you were in here, and for letting me visit.”

“It’s okay, honest,” Ellen assured her with serious, affectionate blue eyes. She lifted her hand out and Amy gave her fingertips a quick squeeze, not wanting to bump the cannula or pull at the tape on the top of her hand. “Bye honey,” Ellen said quietly.

“See you soon, sis,” Amy replied. She looked across the bed at Peter, and into his kind, light blue eyes. She held her hand out bravely for him to shake. “It’s so good to meet you, Peter,” she said. “Hopefully I’ll see you again as well?”

“Definitely,” Peter assured her. He watched as Amy said goodbye to Danni and then slipped out with a final wave in Ellen’s direction, that she unfortunately didn’t see because she couldn’t lift her head well with the brace still on her neck. 

“Well she is just lovely,” Danni said with a gentle, happy smile, as she also stood to say goodbye. Ellen nodded but her brow was furrowed and her eyes were shut. “You okay?” Danni asked. In her periphery she saw Peter press the call button. 

“No,” Ellen said on a sudden half-sob. “I’d really like this headache to be over.”

“I’ll leave you in Peter’s capable hands,” Danni assured her gently as she brushed the backs of her fingers over Ellen’s cheek. She hated seeing her friend in so much pain. “Deep breaths, Mac. You’re okay, just rest. I’ll visit again tomorrow.”

“Thanks Danni,” Ellen said, briefly smiling. “And congratulations. I’m really proud.”

“So you should be,” Danni teased with a grin.


	22. Chapter 22

TWENTY-TWO

“Oh God,” Angie said as she lay naked in bed and stared at the ceiling. Beside her, Oscar had rolled onto his back and reached for her hand. He was holding it gently, their palms clammy and warm. “So much for helping me pack.”

Oscar snorted and laughed. He let go of her hand to scratch his jaw.

“Yeah uh, distracted much, Ange?”

“Yeah,” Angie said on a slow breath as she calmed her racing heart. “It turns out we’re a bit good at this.”

“Hell yes. I think it’s the best sex I ever had.”

“Oscar!”

“What? It’s a compliment,” he said as he rolled onto his side, propped his head up on a hand with his elbow digging into the pillow, and smiled down at her. “I mean it.”

“Thanks, I think,” Angie said as she blushed and looked into his sparkling eyes. “To me it just feels, um, natural, like I’ve been doing this with you for ages. It’s a bit frightening. I should be scared we’re moving too fast, I know that, but I’m not.”

“I know,” Oscar said more softly. He pushed some blonde hair off her forehead and leant down for a lingering, tender kiss. “I just don’t want to waste any more time.”

“Me either,” she said. “We have a chance to change our lives like Mac said, and we should.” She cast her eyes down his body as she brushed the top of her hand back and forth across his torso. “Um,” she said. “Should we talk about birth control? I mean I’m on the pill but um…I don’t know Oscar…how do you want to try to time this?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

“Well,” she said as she looked back into his eyes. She rolled onto her own side and mirrored his position in her bed. They had gone to her house after Peter’s to pack her bags so that she could join him, but they hadn’t gotten very far; the bag was open on the floor at the foot of the bed. “Do you see us as taking a very traditional approach, where we date for a while then maybe make a more permanent commitment – and that takes time of course – and then I come off the pill and we start trying? Because I’ve been on the damn thing since I was seventeen, that’s nearly half my life…I don’t know how fast everything is going to start working again. I could have problems.”

“You want to know whether I want us to be married first,” Oscar said plainly.

“Yeah,” Angie said as she blushed. “Can we talk about that?”

“I’m not going to bolt and run away because you mention the M word,” he said with a kind laugh as he also gave her a playful shove to the shoulder. “You know that.”

“Yes, but it’s just that we only just started being intimate, and-”

“Can I answer the question before you talk yourself in a giant circle?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. She groaned playfully and turned to bury her face in the pillow between them. “Go ahead,” she mumbled.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Oscar told her as he squeezed her shoulder, and then leant forwards to kiss it. “And you know me,” he added. “I’m a pretty traditional guy at heart, and you’re not so unconventional yourself, but if the priority for us right now is children, our children…then I don’t want to put that off for the sake of a wedding, especially if you’re trying to tell me that it might actually take a long time to work.”

“It might,” Angie said as she looked over at him. “And Oscar, what if we can’t? What if I have miscarriages, what if we can’t get pregnant?”

“Ange, I want you,” Oscar said. “That would be upsetting for the both of us, but you’re my mate, my friend. I would never ditch you over something like that. Do you really think that I would? Would you leave, if it was me that was the problem?”

“No, but…these things can change people over time,” Angie said cautiously. “I love you, I promise I am not just using you here. I want this to work for the both of us.”

“Me too. I wouldn’t dream of using you, angel. So, how do you think we should aim to time things?” he asked. “What’s going to make you the most comfortable?”

“I want to come off the pill right away,” she said. “But I don’t want us to start trying for a few months at least, because actually it might not be possible to even get pregnant in that time, and we need to spend proper time together in a relationship before that happens. We need to try to build a stable home together, you know?”

“Yeah,” Oscar said softly, nodding. “I like that plan. I think we can do that.”

“Me too. And I…I would like to get married one day,” Angie added, looking away from him and sighing. “But I don’t mind when that happens and if it’s not something you see yourself doing then it’s not a deal-breaker for me. I don’t think. Maybe it is, I don’t know…my brain is still catching up to the place where my heart is; it kind of ran ahead on its own at some point during the week and now I’m confused.”

“Let’s take some time,” Oscar said in earnest, nodding. “You’re right, we’ve had a few conversations in the last few days and over the last eight years about this, and its like we’re jumping ahead right now to making these really huge decisions without taking much time…because we finally have the freedom to do that, to cross that line.”

“Yeah,” she said softly, deep in a plethora of semi-panicked thoughts. “Thanks Mac.”

“Ange,” Oscar said with a gentle smile as he watched her face and the way her eyes were flicking back and forth. Her mind was racing, but she did steady her gaze and look over at him when he said her name. “Ange,” he started again. “I’d marry you tomorrow if I could. You have to know that.”

Angie pressed her lips together and nodded as tears filled her eyes. 

“So let’s just play it by ear. You come off the pill because it sounds like that’s something you really want to do, and love, ultimately that’s your decision-”

“I know. It just means we’ll have to use something else in the meantime.”

“That is fine with me. I’m sure somewhere between here and whoop-whoop we can find condoms for sale.”

Angie chuckled and nodded wisely. Yes, that was true. 

“And we’ll just focus on being together and getting to know each other outside of work and see how things pan out in three months or six months or a year.”

“I don’t want to wait a year before we start trying,” Angie said quickly. “I’ll be thirty-four in five months. If you and I are really serious about this, then we might need to do things out of order and just trust that it will work out, because it’s us, because we would do everything in our power to make sure we were okay.”

“Always,” Oscar said. “I got your back, baby.” He offered her a cheeky grin as she smiled broadly at him. “We’re really doing this,” he said in a serious sort of wonder.

“Yep,” Angie said. She took a deep, nervous breath and continued smiling at him. “So you’re cool with giving this a few months and then, if all goes well, actively trying for a baby?”

“With you? Absolutely,” he said. “Honestly, this is scary and my heart is beating ten to the dozen right now-”

“Mine too,” she said with a wise, bemused nod. 

“-but what you said before is true; this doesn’t feel weird. Natural, you said, it’s a good word for it. I just think you’re beautiful Ange, you’re a beautiful person, you always have been. With or without kids, whatever happens, I just love you.”

“Thanks, you too,” she said softly as she reached for his face and drew him to her for a kiss. They kissed across each other’s faces, eyes closed, and whispered that they loved each other. To Angie, being so intimate in this way felt surreal, and she was aware of the raw physical and emotional newness, but also of a strange familiarity that lingered in the way they were together, as though this scene had played out between them before a hundred times and she just had never been aware of it until that moment. She knew what that meant. She had never felt that way before with other men she had dated, for months or years in her twenties. This was the end.

Oscar groaned and returned to kiss her lips when she wrapped her arms around his chest and urged him closer. He deepened the kiss when he felt her breasts and soft belly press against his torso. Angie raised her top leg over and around his upper hip and Oscar held her there, stroking up and down the back of her thigh. He hadn’t been with a woman in so long and for it to be Angie…she was right, his brain just wasn’t able to process that yet either, but his heart – and his body – was all in.

*

“Oh God,” Ellen said as she stood in the hospital room’s small bathroom and stared at her newly bared neck in the mirror. Peter was beside her and a nurse was hovering in the doorway, because Ellen couldn’t be trusted to shuffle to the toilet without at least two people supervising her, lest she stumble or pass out. “It’s awful,” she said. 

“That is some fairly serious bruising on my favourite neck,” Peter acknowledged. 

“What the Hell happened to me?” Ellen asked as she met his eyes in their shared reflection. “I don’t remember his hands around my neck except maybe to try to get a grip on my head, but, but…” 

She leant closer and held her hair back, and she turned her head from side to side to try to get a better look at the bruising. It hurt to move her head that much but she knew it was necessary and she knew she didn’t have any spinal damage, and the pain was nothing compared to the headache that was either getting better or was simply much better dulled by drugs that evening. Her sense of sight wasn’t dulled, however.

“He throttled me,” she whispered. “After I was unconscious, Peter, in those seconds before he ran…he had his hands around my neck, do you think?”

“Maybe,” Peter said sadly. “Can I see?”

She turned to him and took a deep breath, still holding her hair back for him. She bravely tilted her chin up to give him better access, and she breathed calmly and slowly as he held her jaw in his hands. Fingertips drifted lightly over the bruising, so that it ticked but didn’t hurt, and as her eyes closed she heard him sigh with sadness.

“I think it partly happened in the struggle,” Peter said. “A lot of twisting back and forth and up and down, it’s surely bruised and sore from that, but also…Ellen, there are fingermarks on both sides, and two thumb prints either side of your trachea.”

“I didn’t stop breathing though, right?” she asked as she opened her eyes and his hands drifted from her face and neck. He shook his head. 

“No, no, you were breathing just fine when we got to you.”

“But this is bad. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe he heard Danni get out of the van and realised he had to let go and run,” Peter said. “If you had stopped breathing, you had only just stopped and you were able to spontaneously restart as soon as the pressure let up. Or, maybe he just doesn’t know how to strangle somebody, because as far as we know he never has before. Maybe he never held you hard enough across your actual throat. The thumb marks aren’t in the best spot; it’s not where you or I – with our knowledge – would put our hands around a throat to stop someone breathing. Maybe he couldn’t leverage enough pressure?”

“Maybe he wasn’t even trying to strangle me,” she mumbled. “Maybe in the few seconds to a minute he had with me he was just…playing around, seeing whether it was something that felt comfortable for him, testing to see what happened. Maybe right now he’s wondering if he could really do it next time, to someone else.”

“Let’s go back to bed,” Peter said gently. He hated that idea. He hated that this guy was doing something more than just acting on angry impulses that he couldn’t control. But of course Ellen had focused in on that part of him, she loved all that profiling stuff. The truth was, the man who was doing this did plan, he was careful, he did choose his victims as much as he waited for the right opportunity to take them, and so perhaps he really had sat there for a few seconds with Ellen and rather than repeatedly bashing her head into the concrete to ensure her death – because that was getting boring – he instead mock-strangled her for fun or experimentation. Ellen was alive because of that decision, though, her bruises would heal, and she would not be forever haunted by a vivid memory of that part of the attack because she’d been unconscious, so perhaps one day Peter would get the chance to thank the bastard.

Beside him, Ellen had turned to the sink to splash some cold water on her face and she was drying it on a piece of paper towel. Peter let his eyes drift down her back. Her hospital gown was tied in knots at the top and across her backside, but it was loose because these were one-size-fits-all hospital standards, and he could easily see the curve of her spine, her smooth, bruised skin, the dimples at her lower back, and the curve of her bottom at the very top of her thighs. He had completely forgotten to go to her house and bring her clothes and underwear that day, but he could do that later. 

“Ready?” he asked as she threw the paper towel in the nearby bin. Ellen nodded. She sniffled and rubbed her throat with a tender wince on her face, but she also turned and began the slow barefoot walk back to her bed. “Thanks,” Peter said to the nurse who had waited. “I’ll make sure she gets into bed okay,” he added when he thought about how petite the nurse in front of him was, compared to him or even Ellen. 

“Peter,” Ellen said once they were alone. She had stopped at the side of her bed and was leaning against it as Peter pulled the sheet back properly and rearranged her pillows. She sighed at how fussy and kind he was being, right down to the way he hummed at her to continue. As frustrating as it might have been in any other situation, this time it wasn’t. “Can we hug please?” she asked. 

Peter looked up in shock when he realised that he hadn’t hugged her since it happened, and he hadn’t kissed her, because they’d barely been alone. He hurried around the bed when he looked into her eyes and saw that she knew that as well. 

“Mac,” he whispered as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest. He buried his face in the hair at her neck and breathed her in. “Of course we can.”

“Thank you,” she whispered into his shoulder as she held onto him as tightly as she could. It was long seconds before she let herself relax against him, but as soon as she did she sobbed into his neck. She hadn’t cried yet, she desperately wanted to cry herself to sleep, but she also didn’t want to do it in a hospital. She stopped it as soon as she could. She just wanted to be home. She was much better at crying at home. 

“I’m so sorry,” Peter whispered emotionally as he held her head beside his and rubbed her back. She felt fragile and it wasn’t right. The embrace lingered as Ellen’s fingers dug into his waist while she fought to compose herself. “I’m sorry this happened.”

“I was already struggling,” she admitted. Her voice shook. Peter knew how much energy it took for her just to admit it to him even though she knew he already knew. 

“I know honey,” he whispered. “I know Elle. We’ll get away soon, just us, like we talked about just yesterday. Holidays are just around the corner. Hold on for me.”

“I thought I was holding on to you,” Ellen quipped suddenly, as she lifted her head and smiled at him. Tears lined her patchy cheeks but her eyes were bright enough. 

“Very funny,” he replied. He tucked her hair behind her ears while she brushed a tear from his cheek. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed, for causing that tear to fall. Peter smiled her apology away and let his eyes roam more seriously across her beautiful face. Did she remember panicking and telling him that she was in love with him in the early hours of that morning, he wondered? He didn’t ask that, though. “So, are you going to tell me what Angie said to you this morning to upset you?” he said instead.

“How did you know that?”

“She told me,” he said. “She and Oscar told me their little plan. The basics, at least. I did not see that coming! But you’ll be pleased to know I made them sit in my kitchen and drink a cup of coffee while I teased them mercilessly. It was very satisfying.”

Ellen chuckled and leant back in his arms as he wrapped them around her waist. 

“P.S.,” he added when his hands settled on the bare skin of her back. “We will bring you some clothes tonight or tomorrow. Angie and Oscar distracted me, I forgot. She said she made a joke about you being honest or something like that. What happened?”

“Just the usual,” Ellen said as she rolled her eyes. “Angie told me about her and Oscar and asked me what I thought. It seems like a done deal already? I was stunned too, still am, but I asked if she loves him and we talked about it. My head was hurting and she’d asked my advice as a friend, so I was just telling her what I felt, as a friend-”

“It’s okay Elle, you don’t have to justify that bit,” Peter said gently. “Go on.”

“Peter, I just said ‘love’ a few times while I was giving her advice, and Angie made a bit of a joke about how I must be on some pretty good drugs to be that free and easy with a word that, for me, must be such a difficult thing to say. Like I don’t even know what it is or something. But what else did she think I’d say? It hurt my feelings.”

“The ones you’re not meant to have?” Peter asked brightly. Ellen scoffed and nodded.

“Yeah, those,” she whispered as she leant forward for another firm, telling hug.


	23. Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

Ellen opened her eyes when she heard someone walk into her room and put something on one of the chairs she was turned towards. The lights had been dimmed since it was getting on in the evening, but Ellen was easily able to make out the back of Danni’s tall, distinctive figure. 

“You again,” she said in jest, chuckling when Danni actually jumped. 

“Did I wake you?” she asked in a whisper. “Sorry Mac-”

“No, no, I was awake,” Ellen assured her. Her eyes drifted to whatever had been put on one of her visiting chairs. “What’s that?”

“Clothes,” Danni said. “Peter called and told me the combination to your locker at work, so I was able to get the spare key, go to your place, and bring you some stuff.”

“You didn’t have to do-”

“Don’t even finish the sentence,” Danni said as she sat down on the second chair and shuffled it closer so that they could better see each other’s faces. “A woman has to have clean knickers, after all. I brought underwear and pyjamas, and a change of casual clothes for when you go home. I also packed a bag of toiletries, I just raided your bathroom – I hope that’s okay – and so I’ve got your toothbrush here, toothpaste, a brush for your hair, some hair ties, deodorant, the hand cream from your bedside table…you know, the essentials.”

“Thank you Danni,” Ellen said as her voice shook with gratitude. “Thanks.”

“The only thing I couldn’t find was the Pill. It occurred to me that if you’re on it and you stop for a few days you could end up with a period in hospital and that would not be very nice!”

“Thanks for checking and thinking of that, but I don’t take it, I haven’t for years,” Ellen assured her. “I’m fine for everything else right now too.”

“Good,” Danni said. She looked into Ellen’s eyes and smirked. “Well I threw a box of tampons in the bag anyway, just in case.”

“Thank you,” Ellen said again. “Peter’s just gone to find some dinner; he’s going to try to smuggle in some Thai, I think.”

“Ah, I’ll hang around then in case I need to create a diversion,” Danni said with a laugh. “And since he’s gone…do you want to have a proper shower and get changed? I asked the nurses on the way in and they’re totally okay with that as long as someone is with you. I saw it earlier, there’s a rail to hold onto, and a chair-”

“I would love a hot shower,” Ellen admitted. “I’m okay on my feet now, and the vertigo I had this morning is gone. My headache is still killing me slowly, but I feel more alert, I’ve been napping on and off. I just…I know I’m very naked beneath this gown but I still don’t want a nurse to have to stand there and watch me shower.”

“What about me?” Danni asked. “Not great, I know, but better? There’s no need to be self-conscious with me either, because we’re the same age, give or take six months, so our bodies are the same age. So you have a shower and let me help you, okay?”

“Is that an order?” Ellen asked, teasing gently as she absorbed that information. 

“Pretty much,” Danni replied as Ellen nodded and they smiled. “Okay, you sit up and get steady, I’ll get PJs and toiletries ready. Hey, that rhymes! Oh, and I brought a towel too, just in case.”

“You thought of everything.”

“I really did,” Danni said seriously as she dug in the front pocket of her jeans and produced the small velvet drawstring bag in which Ellen had stored her new silver charm bracelet the previous afternoon. It had been in her locker. 

“Oh,” Ellen said as her eyes widened in surprise. “Can you hold onto it until after I shower?”

“Absolutely. Let’s do it.” She collected Ellen’s toiletry bag, slung a thin towel over one arm and collected pyjamas and underwear in the other. 

Ellen sat and then slid off the bed, testing out her balance in the dim light. She was excited about the prospect of a hot shower. She had seen the shower in the bathroom earlier but it hadn’t occurred to her to ask for a shower when it meant nurses, or even Peter, standing and watching her. Peter hadn’t seen her naked in nearly seven years, and Ellen was adamant that he wasn’t going to get that opportunity in a hospital.

Danni walked beside her on the way to the bathroom but tried not to hover or to get in Ellen’s way. She was impressed by Ellen’s balance; she walked slowly but surely.

“Bright lights coming on,” Danni warned as she ducked ahead to turn the lights on in the bathroom. She then stood to one side and allowed Ellen to walk into the room on her own. Danni did not completely shut the door, she left it unlatched, but she slid it partway closed for privacy. “Are you going to sit or stand?” Danni asked as she put the clothes, towel and toiletries on the bench beside the sink. 

“I’ll try standing,” Ellen said. She turned her back to Danni and gathered up her hair so that Danni could untie the hospital gown that had been truthfully driving Ellen insane for hours. Still, Ellen was very aware of the fact that Danni had never seen her naked before, and she was definitely about to see a lot more of her boss, Detective Senior Sergeant Mackenzie, than she probably ever thought she would. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Ellen asked as Danni patiently unpicked the knots.

“Yep,” Danni said. “Mum and my aunt were both nurses, it’s genetic. You’re safe with me.”

“Thanks,” Ellen said softly. She sighed and admitted, “I haven’t felt so safe today.”

“I get that,” Danni assured her. She held her warm hands to Ellen’s shoulders from behind as the gown fell forward and Ellen gathered it hurriedly in her arms. Danni said nothing about the dark bruising across her back, beneath her shoulder blades. It was surely incredibly painful, but Ellen hadn’t mentioned it. Perhaps her headache was masking any and all other sources of pain, but the bruises were a deep, dark purple. “What about with Pete?” Danni asked. “Do you feel safer with him here?”

“Oh, yeah, um…yes I do.”

“He hasn’t told you, has he,” she said when she heard the hesitation in Ellen’s voice and, when she passed Ellen to turn the shower on and test the water, she happened to also see the guarded expression on her face. Ellen’s blue eyes lifted and widened as Danni simply raised a curious brow and held out her hands for the bundled-up gown.

“Told me what?” Ellen asked. She took a deep breath, summoned her courage, and handed Danni the gown, before quickly stepping into the door-less shower area. The water was hot and soothing and Ellen shut her eyes. She abandoned any ideas she’d had about keeping her hair dry; she delighted in turning her face upwards and smoothing her hands over her sore head, combing her warmed, wet hair off her face. 

She didn’t forget about Danni, though, and soon opened her eyes to look at her. 

“What hasn’t Peter told me?” Ellen asked again.

“That I know,” Danni said simply. Her arms were folded casually across her chest as she watched Ellen frown and put her hands on her hips. 

“What?”

“Do you remember this morning, the first conversation you had with Pete? Do you remember telling him…that you were in love with him?”

“He told you that?” Ellen asked as her mouth fell open and her heart rate sped up. 

“Worse, I’m afraid. I overheard you. I already knew though. He was in pieces last night, Ellen-”

“You never call me Ellen.”

“Peter does though, right?” Danni asked. “When you’re alone?”

Ellen’s eyes filled with tears as she stared at Danni. She was speechless. There were no words.

“I’m not telling you this to challenge you or anything,” Danni said gently. “I just want you to know that you can talk to me.”

“He was in pieces?” Ellen asked. She bit her bottom lip. Sitting down in the shower was starting to sound really appealing. 

“Yes. I’ve known that he was in love with you for years,” Danni admitted kindly. “Ever since he and I had our own office fling…it ended once he told me your history together, and I realised what was still there beneath the surface. I didn’t know how you felt, until this morning. I wasn’t sure if you remembered telling him that.”

“It’s in snippets, like the memory of a dream. I wasn’t sure if it was real. It is?”

“Yes. You didn’t want to go to sleep all groggy and risk not waking up again without him knowing how you felt. It was very sweet.”

“Oh God. I thought I dreamed that,” Ellen said again under her breath. She sighed and stepped back into the full stream of the water. It gave her a reason to shut her eyes and just to take a moment to think. 

Peter hadn’t actually said that he loved her, and she hadn’t been waiting for him to go first or anything as petty as that, but she had been nervous about saying it. Obviously they loved each other, they each knew it, but Ellen was nervous about what saying the words would mean; a future of saying it every day, perhaps, or having to actually make love with Peter rather than just have sex with him like she had in the past. Ellen wasn’t even sure if she knew how to do that, if she was brutally honest. Maybe she put too much stock in those words, but she had told Peter the truth when she said that no man had ever told her that he was in love with her, and she also hadn’t said it since she was in her early twenties. She hadn’t meant it then anyway; again, it had just been for sex, nothing more. So as pathetic and developmentally delayed as this made her, it was a big fucking deal for Ellen to be in love with him. She didn’t want to fuck it up. 

“What did he say?” Ellen asked Danni when she couldn’t remember. 

“He just told you that he knew. He said, ‘I know’.”

“So now…you know?”

“I only know now that there are feelings on both sides, and that you both are aware of it. Whatever happens is your business, but Mac, you can talk to me all right? Woman to woman if you like, as friends…and I promise it won’t be weird cos of me and Pete. That was a total non-event years ago. You two were always...so much more. I get it.”

“I might get out now,” Ellen said softly as she nodded, accepting Danni’s offer. She turned the water off while Danni retrieved a towel and held it out. “Did you hear from Angie today?” Ellen asked while she dried herself, careful to dry her hair around the bump and bruising at the back of her head. She was starting to feel tired; time to get dressed and get back into bed quickly, she thought. 

Danni saw Ellen fading and so she didn’t answer right away. She focused on getting a singlet into Ellen’s hands as soon as she was dry, and she helped Ellen step into underwear and long, winter pyjama pants. 

“These are cute,” she said kindly as she settled them around Ellen’s hips. A matching long-sleeved top went on over the singlet, and they were done. Danni knew that Ellen could brush her hair and dry it out and do all that stuff in bed. “I did hear from Angie,” Danni said once they were on their way to that very bed. It was a measure of how tired Ellen was that Danni had been able to wrap an arm around Ellen’s back and hold onto her nearest arm to make sure she was balanced, without any form of protest.

“She’s gone with Oscar,” Ellen said.

“Yeah, they’ve got a thing going apparently.”

“Did you know that too?”

“Not at all, Mac,” Danni said with a laugh. She helped Ellen into bed and arranged the sheet and blanket around her hips. Ellen picked up the controller and raised the bed so that she could lean back into her pillows but be mostly upright. Danni rushed back into the bathroom for a dry hospital towel that she put between Ellen’s wet hair and the pillows, to keep them dry. Ellen smiled appreciatively at the thought. 

“I just don’t know what to think,” she admitted to Danni. “I don’t care as a boss because I’m really not their boss anymore, but as a friend it’s still…it’s so fast.”

“You opened the floodgates when you told us all that we were released from our obligations to you and the unit,” Danni said. “We’ll see what they make of it, right? As I understand it, they just want to be together and to have a family together and maybe they’ve always wanted that.”

“I wouldn’t have known if that were true,” Ellen said sadly as she sighed and shrugged. “Based on what Angie told me I suppose it is true and I just didn’t know.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Danni said with a laugh when she was able to sit back down in the chair. She fiddled around in her pocket for the pouch containing Ellen’s bracelet. “Peter and I were blindsided as well. Here, hand out. I see they took your thingie-ma-jig out of your hand, that must feel a lot more comfortable.”

“Your mum was a nurse huh?” Ellen asked with a wry smirk. “Is the lingo genetic too? Yes, they took it out. I’m on pills now.”

“Ah, that’s a lot of progress in twenty-four hours. Excellent.” She fastened the bracelet around Ellen’s right wrist and smiled at the shy, content expression on her friend’s face. “I’m really happy you know,” Danni added. “About you and Peter.”

“Ha. I think Angie and Oscar just jumped ten steps ahead of us. How embarrassing.”

Danni shook her head and opened her mouth to reply just as Peter hurried into the room with a plastic bag of takeaway containers and a handful of forks. He was grinning proudly until he saw Danni, and then he rolled his eyes. 

“I heard there was going to be food,” she quipped. 

“She can have some of mine,” Ellen said. “Payment for services rendered.”

“You had a shower,” Peter stated obviously as he took the time to really look at Ellen, sitting back against a towel over her pillows, in purple and pink pyjamas with white stars on them. Not all of the buttons were done up, and there was a white singlet underneath. Her dark hair was pulled over one shoulder, still ruffled and un-brushed. 

“I went and got her stuff, and gave her a hand,” Danni explained as Peter approached the bed and put the food down on the mattress by Ellen’s legs. He perched by her waist, held her hand and smiled down at her. 

“Thanks Danni,” he said. “And Mac, cute PJs honey. Don’t we look adorable?”

“Oh shut up,” Ellen said under her breath with a laugh. Yet she looked more seriously into his eyes when he touched her cheek and jaw and offered her a private smile. 

Behind them, Danni was taking it upon herself to unpack the bag containing a plastic container of steamed rice, and two containers of beef with different sauces.

“Ooh, my favourite!” she declared as she held one up to get a closer look. “Let’s turn the lights up and eat all this before the nurses come in and tell us off.”

“Was there a long line at the shop?” Ellen asked as she briefly laced her fingers through Peter’s warm hand, before letting him go so that he could help with dinner. She sat forward and crossed her legs, eager for some plain rice at least. 

“Yeah but that’s not why I took so long,” Peter said. “I had a call from my agent to return, and the people who made the offer on my place yesterday decided they didn’t want to risk it going to open house tomorrow. They upped their offer and I decided to accept it. One-point-four million, seven hundred and fifty thousand. All done!”

“Holy cow,” Danni said with wide eyes. “Can you just repeat that again for me?”

“That’s amazing!” Ellen said. She gestured for Peter to come back to her and raised her arms for a hug. Peter leant over and squeezed her waist and back playfully before they parted and he turned to Danni. Danni was looking at him, face frozen in shock.

“Since when are you selling? Where are you moving to? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I didn’t want to make a big deal about it,” Peter said easily. He handed Ellen a fork and the container of rice. “Here Elle, go for your life. We’ll eat whatever you don’t.”

“Thanks Pete,” she said as she began poking at the rice. She spooned a little into her mouth. She hadn’t eaten anything in more than twenty-four hours and it was a strange feeling, it was almost like her body thought it was hungry but wasn’t quite sure if that was the right word for the feeling anymore. And it wasn’t as though she’d had a healthy, regular eating plan going on beforehand either. Rice would help, she thought. 

“Don’t worry Danni,” Peter said at her aghast expression. “I’m not going far. Elle and I are taking two months of long service leave to recharge and to have a proper think about work; I’m not a young cop anymore and this one needs a genuine break. I’ll worry about finding a place to live when we’re back from a tour of Queensland’s beaches, and-” He turned to meet Ellen’s eyes hopefully. “I thought maybe also the Northern Territory. We could start at Uluru? The outback?” he asked. Ellen grinned.


	24. Chapter 24

TWENTY-FOUR

Oscar got off the quad bike as Angie pulled hers to a stop alongside him. They had stopped on the property’s Eastern ridge for a good view of the fence line as it ran down the ridge to their right, and across to a number of paddocks on the flat below. 

“Are there meant to be cows down there?” Angie asked as she pointed. 

Oscar made a noise that was a cross between a grunt and a hum. It made Angie smirk. 

He walked a few paces forward to test the strength of one of the wooden poles driven into the ground. It moved easily as he pushed it forward and then pulled it back. Angie could see that the wiring strung between the fences was limp and loose. The fencing at the Southern boundary was the same. Grass was overgrown in paddocks that should have been regularly turned over by stock and it did not look like the Eastern paddocks would be a vast improvement. 

“Should we get down there?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” Oscar said as he sighed. He walked along the fence line and down half a metre at the crest of the ridge, to test another pole’s strength. Angie watched carefully. It wasn’t a steep drop-off but it wouldn’t be comfortable if he fell. Still, he was fine. He knew the land a lot better than she did. He had grown up with his brothers in this place; he knew it inside out. “These fences are going to Hell.”

“The wood looks pretty old,” Angie conceded. “The wires as well.”

“We’ll need to re-do it all,” he said. “I bet the cattle have pushed through down there in the back paddock and they’ve wandered onto Kristy’s land in the last day or two.”

“Will they be okay?” Angie asked. 

“Yeah, as long as there aren’t any major injuries from the fencing,” Oscar told her with a gentle smile. “I dunno how Kristy is gonna feel about the visitors, but we’ll head down there next and investigate. We might need to round them up and drive ‘em back. I can probably rig up some fencing that will hold for the time being. You game?”

“Sure,” Angie said with a nod. She was glad she came. It would have been awful if Oscar was discovering he had to do all this work on his own. She and Oscar had been finding dilapidated fencing for the majority of the morning. All of the fencing was in various states of disrepair and there didn’t seem to be the level of stock in paddocks that Angie remembered. In fact, there was no stock in paddocks, and Oscar didn’t seem sure if there was meant to be. That was potentially problematic, certainly for the business and his parents and their future.

It wasn’t just the property, either. Oscar’s childhood home was just as Angie remembered it; part brick, part weatherboard, it was an old, modest country home of just one story. Oscar remembered all the furniture from his childhood, and it certainly had not changed one little bit in the six years since she had seen it last. 

Shirley kept an immaculately clean, dust-free home, and Angie knew that she took a lot of pride in being a loving mum and a good farmer’s wife, but there was no doubt that the four-bedroom, one-bathroom house needed moderate-level renovations. Paint was chipping and faded on the walls inside and out, floorboards creaked, the wood on the decking and front porch was rotten in places, the steps were simply dangerous, and the windows were dirty and in need of a high-pressure hose-down. The gutters at least were clean of debris, the rose garden and herb garden outside the kitchen window were flourishing, but those were all Shirley’s jobs.

So they had two weeks to tackle what they could. Charlie wasn’t keen on asking other people for help, and he would not like the idea of his eldest son – the traitor who ran away to become a cop – sauntering back fifteen-odd years later for two weeks to try to magically fix everything for him. Still, it had to be done. 

“We should work on some kind of list of priorities,” Angie said. “The fencing of course, and some stuff in the house.”

“Yeah, we should do something nice for mum,” Oscar said. “Fix the fucking front stairs and front porch for one. What have they been doing, jumping up like we did?”

“Probably.”

“Stuff that, even I’m too old for that,” Oscar said under his breath as he squinted down towards the paddocks. He sighed and looked back to Angie, hands on his hips. They were both dressed in jeans, boots and casual jumpers; it was sunny but cold, and Angie met his eyes with genuine uncertainty about what she was looking at all around her, but confident that they could do something about it.

“Two weeks before they get back,” she said. 

“I’m gonna kill mum for not telling me it was like this,” Oscar said. “We speak every week on the phone. Every week.”

“She knew you’d come home, Oscar,” Angie explained softly. “She didn’t want you to give up your dream, or feel like you owed it to her to do that.”

“Yeah,” he said on another sigh. “That doesn’t make it right though. I bet dad’s been listening, or telling her not to say anything, or whatever. I can’t believe it.”

“He’s obviously not coping with the work.”

“He’s strong enough still,” Oscar said. “He’s fit.”

“His mind isn’t though.”

“No,” Oscar agreed. “Jesus, Ange.” He rubbed his face and groaned. “Um, okay. I honestly didn’t think it would be this bad. I thought maybe one or two fences and a few odd jobs around the house. So today… Look, how about we go back to the house and the sheds. I need to find something to secure those back paddocks. It’ll have to be temporary, and then if there are any cattle to recover from Kristy’s place, we’ll go get ‘em. I’ll introduce you to Kristy too, she’s really cool, about mum’s age but a bit more of a hippie. She’s been looking after the dog, Kelsey the Kelpie, and we can get her back too. Then we’ll come back here and start making a list of everything we need for the house. Timber, paint, nails…though we could give the windows a half-decent clean tonight, make a start on that at least, cos they are filthy.”

“I reckon they’ve seen a few dust storms,” Angie said with a chuckle. She wanted to keep things light so added, “It sounds like a good plan, babe.” Oscar just nodded.

“I just don’t want mum to have to put up with this,” he said with a deepening frown and sad eyes as he looked at her. “I don’t want her to have to go through it.”

“How long do you think it’s been like this?” Angie asked curiously. “The impression I got from your mum was that Shane’s only been gone six months or so, and Brad only left a couple of months ago.”

“Ah, they wouldn’t have done shit about the house,” Oscar said. “They really would have just jumped over the rotten boards every day without a care in the world about fixing them. But I bet they realised what’s been going on with dad and they’ve taken their chance to scarper. If that’s what they’ve done, I am not happy. They haven’t bothered to tell me either. Most days they would have been out here with dad, if they weren’t in town hanging out with mates, or over on mate’s properties doing work for them…But if you’re asking if things can turn on a property after two months of inactivity, then the answer is yes, it can all turn to shit really quickly.”

“Got it,” Angie said. “You’ll have to bear with me here, Oscar. I’m gonna ask a lot of stupid questions. I’ve spent three days on a farm in my life, six years ago.”

“I know Ange,” Oscar said more gently. “Sorry. I’m just…flabbergasted.” He threw his arms out and chuckled at his own choice of words, and Angie walked up to him and gave him a hug. He returned it gratefully and sighed into her neck. 

“We can handle this,” she assured him. “And on the bright side, I won’t need to go running much in the next two weeks; I’ll be exhausted from all the work we do!”

“I hope that’s not the only reason you’ll be exhausted,” Oscar said as he grasped her arms and leant back to playfully grin. “Do we need to add it to our list of priorities?”

“Maybe,” she admitted, before laughing freely as he tickled her ribs. She ducked around him and put her hands on his back to push him in the direction of the bikes. “Come on Stone, let’s find some wire and gloves. You know what else is positive?”

“What?” he asked skeptically.

“The horses look in good nick.”

“That’s cos they’re mum’s babies. She looks after them,” Oscar explained. “I bet she doesn’t let the old man anywhere near them. We’ll go for a ride…maybe tomorrow?”

“I would love that Oscar,” Angie told him with a bright smile as they got back on the bikes. She felt a bit weird not wearing a helmet, but that was another thing they would have to hunt around to find, and it was not as though they were going very quickly at all; Oscar wasn’t the joy-riding type, and he definitely was not in a joy-riding mood. They started their engines one at a time, Oscar hung back to make sure that Angie got away okay, and they rumbled slowly back along the ridge in the direction of the house and the shed that, hopefully, still contained everything they would need. 

It was going to be a long two weeks.

*

Danni tiptoed into the hospital room with a coffee in each hand and sat down beside Peter when she realised that Ellen was still fast asleep in bed. She checked her watch and raised her eyebrows at the time. 

“Making up for yesterday I guess,” Peter said without her having to say a word. “She spent the whole day proving to other people that she was perfectly all right, chatting away when she should have been out cold, and now she’s finally sleeping it off.”

“Nine o’clock, I’m impressed,” Danni said with a nod. “You did go home last night?”

“Yeah,” Peter said on a sigh. “I went home around ten and got here a couple of hours ago with the paper…is one of those for me?”

“Oh yes, sorry, cappuccino,” she said as she handed him one of the enclosed paper cups. “I thought you might need it.”

“Thanks Danni,” Peter said. “And honestly, thanks for getting Elle into the shower yesterday while I was out. It’s probably why she’s sleeping so well, she’s in her own clothes and not, well, practically naked in a strange bed.”

“It’s all right,” Danni said quietly. “I distracted her so she didn’t freak out about being naked in a hospital shower with me standing there, by talking about you instead. She didn’t even notice my brilliant plan was working…that’s because I’m brilliant too.”

Peter chuckled and grinned at her. 

“You talked about me?” he asked pointedly, eyebrow raised.

“Only,” Danni began as she held up a hand in her own defence. “Because I thought it fair that she knew that I knew.”

Peter frowned and sipped his cappuccino.

“What is it that you know?”

“That you both are hopeless privacy maniacs!” Danni hissed as she rolled her eyes. “And that you’re in love each other?”

“Danni,” Peter said as his blue eyes went wide. “Did you tell her that you were there when she woke up yesterday? You didn’t tell her what she said to me, did you? I was hoping she forgot!”

“I’m sorry, you were hoping that Mac forgot that she said she was in love with you? That makes zero sense, Church.”

Peter rolled his eyes and checked that Ellen was still asleep. She lying on her back with her eyes closed, her breathing steady, not moving; they were safe to continue. He turned more in his chair towards Danni so he could lower his voice even further.

“We haven’t actually said it yet,” he said. “I don’t think she’ll be too thrilled that she said it to me for the first time all drugged up in a hospital, that’s all. When she kissed me at her birthday party that was the first kiss since we broke up seven years ago. That’s it Dan, that’s all we’ve done. We certainly haven’t slept together again-”

“But you’re going on holidays together-”

“Obviously we’re planning to at some point, but it’s about timing.”

“Well, newsflash, Mac knows you love her. She now knows that you’ve loved her at least since we were sleeping together, cos I told her. Just be brave man, tell her!”

“Not here,” Peter said plainly. “And thank you so much for that update, by the way.”

“Well you could have been the one to help Mac in the shower, but no-o-o-o. Be careful what you wish for, Church. She’s my friend too and after Angie really put her foot in it I thought it was best if I made sure Mac knew that she and I could talk about lady-things and friend-things and that she didn’t have to feel like she couldn’t talk to me about you just because you and I did…other-things…for one month three years ago. I know that has stuffed everything up for the two of you, I know all her stress and isolationist ‘but I’m the boss’ bullshit stems from her finding out about you and me having a fling and pulling away. I lost her as a proper friend then too, you know, and I’ve missed her too. That’s what we’re doing here, right? Fixing it.”

“Yeah,” Peter said under his breath as he relaxed and nodded. “Yeah sorry Danni, sorry. If it helps, Elle’s never been angry about it-”

“No, she got sad. That’s worse.”

Peter sighed as he turned back to Ellen and watched her sleeping. Her breaths were deep and even and her head was turned slightly towards them. Her dark hair stood out against her fair skin and the light pink and purple colours of her pyjamas. 

“I love her Danni,” he whispered in a choked voice as his heart thudded painfully. 

“I know,” she said as she patted his denim-clad thigh. “Has she been depressed?”

“No, no, just burnt out. Bill was killed, we…happened…she threw herself into work to cope with the fact that she thought she’d lost important people in her life, she had even less of a life than she’d had before. Three years on and she’s not sad. This last week or so she’s actually said to me that she’s happy, she’s said it a lot…I love that-”

“You did that.”

“No, she did that as well,” he acknowledged. “Mac just needs to feel safe, and it’s nothing to do with our job, though maybe it is in a way. We are now privacy maniacs, paranoid too, but between you and me Mac hasn’t always felt very safe. My dad beat the shit out of me, and no one ever hit Elle they just…didn’t love her, not outwardly. I think she’s nervous about us saying we love each other. That would be new, to her.”

“Am I the only other person who knows that she’s adopted as well?” Danni asked. 

Peter nodded.

“She doesn’t like to talk about it, not at work. I didn’t know about her dad, for example. Ellen and I…Look, do you want to know the details? In confidence?”

“I thought this was you giving me details already, but okay. Mac’s asleep, you just talk away, my friend.”

“Okay. Well, Mac and I, we’ve only been seeing each other outside of work for a month, and it’s just been breakfast once a week. I initiated it, but she was keen. We’ve both been enjoying each other’s company again. We’ve always talked but now we really, properly, talk. We hold hands and hug, in public. That’s a big deal for two people who slept around in secret for a year once upon a time. It was always no strings with us, no personal talks, and no love required was the rule, but we both felt it, we still do. We were just never able to show it. It’s been buried…for a long time.”

“You can be more open about that now,” Danni said. “You should be.”

“We’re getting there. Mac told me that she found her biological mum years ago, nothing more than that, but she’s told me a lot since. It’s going well with them. I think finally feeling a part of a family and our breakfasts have helped; she can give herself permission to share her life with people again, she can be herself, and to be a sister to this young girl over the past couple of years…she kept it private but unbeknownst to us I think it’s helped to stave off the burnout. But it’s still there, simmering away.”

“Like having to go home sick on Monday after the announcement? Mac’s never sick.”

“Right now, Elle barely has it under control, and she’s hidden it well but as soon as she started training me for the Sergeant’s exam – and maybe she was reaching out to me in her own way by offering that – I saw it, she let me see it. She’s emotionally and physically wrecked, everything you see at work is an act, everything we’ve seen for years. It’s getting harder for her. I get that she loves the job and she’s so strong but Mac needs me right now, the whole Peter, not just an old bonk trying to get into her pants. I am getting her out of the city as soon as the factory closes Danni, it cannot wait. We’re just going somewhere quiet to chill the fuck out, just the two of us.”

“It can’t wait huh? Look, honestly Pete, it sounds like a great idea,” Danni said. “You both deserve a long holiday in the middle of nowhere to relax and to sort out what you want from each other. Now you’re homeless, are you going to move in with her?”

“We’ll see,” Peter said. “I’d like to buy a home for both of us, she knows that.”

“For what it’s worth I hope you come back to the city refreshed so we can still hang out on days off and maybe even work together sometimes.” At the twitch she noticed in Peter’s jaw she added, “Or maybe you’re contemplating retirement? Both of you?”

“Honestly, we just don’t know yet Danni,” he said as his eyes drifted back to Ellen’s sleeping face. “That’s why we’ve been evasive with questions about the Taskforce. Right now, the way we feel, we would both retire tomorrow. Elle wants to run, she’s so close to running it scares me, but after a rest? Who knows. I won’t push her either way, we’ll just be together and I’ll take her lead. She needs to rest, and as scared as we were the other night, an awful part of me is incredibly grateful that rest is being forced upon her now.” He glanced at Danni, who reached over to squeeze his hand.

“Not an awful part,” she assured him with kindness.


	25. Chapter 25

TWENTY-FIVE

“Good news and bad news,” Jeff said later that morning as he stood at the end of Ellen’s half-raised hospital bed with a file in his hands. He looked into her wary, guarded eyes. 

“Let’s start with the good news then,” she said. “Did the fingerprints come through?”

“Yes, to a man called Hamish Berger; a short list of convictions for car theft, speeding and resisting arrest. We questioned him last night. He hasn’t confessed. He’s claiming to have been looking for a car to nick off with when he witnessed the attack while hiding between two cars a bit further along, before he ran away.”

Ellen’s brow furrowed. 

“Danni and Peter both said the man they saw running was wearing a baseball cap-”

“We searched his place and couldn’t find your hat or anything linking him to the other women,” Jeff said. “His prints also were not on your car, and if there were any prints they were washed away in the rain. We found Berger’s set on and around the clip for one of the car boots, like he was trying to lift it.”

“This is starting to sound like the bad news, Jeff,” Ellen warned with an accusingly raised brow and the hint of a wry smirk. “You don’t think it’s him?”

“I have a photo line-up with me,” he said. “Genuinely, we’re not sure yet what we’re looking at here. So take your time…and I probably shouldn’t have just told you all that stuff about him before showing you the pics, so wipe that from your memory-”

“Here,” Ellen said on a sigh as she stretched her arm out to receive the photograph. “I’m still capable of doing my job objectively, Jeff.” She opened the folder once Jeff handed it to her and retrieved six photographs of men. They all had different representations of dark hair and dark eyes, but only half had the beard she remembered touching. She frowned in thought as she looked at them all carefully. 

One face struck her as familiar; beard, thin face, hollow cheeks, brown eyes.

“I don’t recognise anyone specifically from the assault,” Ellen said definitively. “I don’t think it was any of these men, but I do know this one.” She held the photograph out to Jeff and he took it and looked closely. “This is one of the two men we’ve observed on the path for a few nights over the last week. His friend is a short blonde man who smokes called Ben-”

“Ah yes, we’ve been reviewing all your footage now as well. He was there the first night, in the rain, are you sure?”

“Definitely, that’s him. I remember the way his cheeks sloped in like that. Is it a coincidence he’s in this line-up, or is this your car thief?”

Jeff sighed and showed her the photograph again, this time just holding it at his chest and turning it around so that she could get another look.

“That’s Hamish Berger,” he said. 

“That might explain why he and his buddy hang around that end of the park,” Ellen said. “If they’re knocking off cars and planning jobs, they could be on their own type of surveillance. That part of the street where I was assaulted is pretty sparsely populated, more cars parked on the side of the road than people out and about.”

“Are you sure this is not the man who assaulted you?” Jeff asked. 

Ellen pursed her lips, took a deep breath, and looked again at the picture as carefully as she had told hundreds if not thousands of men and women to do in her own career.

“I’m sure,” she said. “In hindsight the height is quite accurate, but the man who assaulted me was fit, athletic, almost…” She bit her bottom lip and frowned more deeply just as Peter walked in with a box of fruit and sandwiches, and a thermos. 

“Sorry,” Peter whispered when he realised he was interrupting mid-conversation.

“It’s okay mate,” Jeff said. “Come in. Ellen, just take your time. You said he was fit, athletic, almost…?”

“Military-like in the way that he grabbed me,” she said in a steady and thoughtful voice. She sat forward a little as Peter took a seat beside her as quietly as possible. He sat back in his chair to simply listen, not to interfere, as Ellen was deep in thought. 

“What gave you that impression, do you remember?” Jeff asked. He put the photograph of Hamish facedown on the bed so that she could clear her mind of him.

“Yes I do, but it’s hard to put into words. There was a precision about the way he yanked me off my feet, and when I spun around he grabbed me around the face. His arm pushed me down and back against the bottom of the car window, but it wasn’t in an elbow-up, hand-down kind of way – he wasn’t bringing his arm up to a height above my head to push me down – his forearm stayed absolutely parallel to the ground, and he was taller than me, so it’s like he grabbed me and used the power in his shoulder and back to drop me and slam me backwards. It felt very robotic.”

“Physically strong then. Do you remember if he was muscular?”

“I remember the tights he was wearing. Running skins, that’s clearer today. They had a thin yellow or white stripe on them. I remember his forearm and chest during that maneuver. I know I said he was thin yesterday, he seemed thin in my mind during the assault, but it’s his legs that looked thin…because of the skins he was wearing…I think actually his chest was quite broad. Sorry Jeff, this is really piece-meal-”

“No, no,” Jeff said as he scribbled in his small notebook. “It’s fine. You know how little we have from the other victims and their descriptions are all mixed; thin, strong, tall, average height…we’re all just doing the best we can. This is getting desperate.”

“Did you check under my nails?” Ellen asked suddenly, with wide eyes. “I know I’ve showered but-”

“They checked while you were still unconscious,” Peter told her softly. “Nothing.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Ellen winced sadly and sighed at the fact she had failed to collect DNA.

“Not your fault,” Jeff assured her. “So do you think he was just strong, Ellen? What makes you say military-like?”

“Just the vibe,” she suggested on a frown. “There was…something about the way he moved. I actually…I think I did pretty well to defend myself and it was almost as though I knew what was going to happen half a second before it did. I kicked his legs out from under him, I got my hand up over my face to protect it, I was able to spin around and try to get away. In the end he was just stronger but it felt a little rehearsed, like…like training, like a training exercise.”

“What sort of training?”

“Self-defence, perhaps,” she said. “Police assault training, maybe. All I know is while it was happening…I called out for backup when I could but I wasn’t scared, I was almost just going through the motions, I don’t remember any fear-”

“That’s the shock, Elle,” Peter told her gently with a smile as her uncertain eyes flickered in his direction. 

“Yes I know but…I don’t know, Jeff, there was just something about it that I was aware of when it happened, and I was aware of it yesterday but couldn’t put it into words…There was something really mechanically, efficiently strong about him.”

“You got the impression that he’d had some training?”

“I got the impression…that he is very regimented in the way he attacks women. We already know that he is of course, everyone seems to be attacked in a very similar way, right down to the location where it happens, but we didn’t know if that was habit, careful planning, or something more instinctive. I think it’s part of the last two; part careful planning, part instinct, in terms of the way he moves. I’m sorry I don’t know how to explain it better, and it’s not going to help you catch him.”

“No, but the physical description and the description of those skins might. How about the beard? What was it like?”

“Short,” Ellen said. “Not as scruffy on the ends as Hamish, but about the same colour. It felt prickly, and I would say that it was more than not having shaved for a couple of days, but less than a beard that had been there a long time. I remember plump lips.”

“Bare hands or gloves?”

“Bare hands, they were cold.”

“Did anything he say or do give you the impression that your cover was blown?”

“No, nothing,” Ellen said softly as she shook her head. “He didn’t say anything at all to me, it was fast and silent. I did call out for Peter but that wouldn’t necessarily have blown my cover. As far as we know he didn’t see the earpiece, he certainly didn’t try to remove it because I’m told the nurses did that. In my car the radio was hidden, and when it’s all turned off and in the dark it looks like a regular car. It is, mostly.”

“Did you see anyone else around?”

“No. I certainly didn’t see Hamish.”

“Hmm,” Jeff hummed in thought. “Okay, we might leave it there for now. At this point it’s not actually clear who Danni saw fleeing the scene, Hamish or our man. I’ll have another talk with her. I find it hard to believe there were two people there, but we’re going to have to let him go. However, not before he tells us where we can find his blonde mate, who might also have seen something. We’ll keep an eye on them.”

“Thank you Jeff,” Ellen said with a gentle smile.

“When are they letting you out of this place?” he asked. “You look a lot better.”

“The headache isn’t as bad this morning, but I’m a bit dizzy. I hope this afternoon.”

“Yeah, home is best. Oh well, I’m sure you’ll be back on your feet in a day or two, and you were super, fighting this guy off. I’ll be in touch okay? See ya Church.”

“Bye mate,” Peter said, as Ellen also smiled and waved him off. She sighed and looked into Peter’s curious eyes. “Who’s Hamish?”

“Smokey number two,” she said. “Ben’s tall friend. He’s got a rap for car theft.”

“He’s the prints they found on the car further up?” Peter asked. Ellen nodded. “But they don’t think it’s him?”

“I don’t think it’s him,” she corrected. “I’m positive it’s not him, actually. The cops aren’t sure either, although that means that two people fled that scene possibly within seconds of each other, and only one of them was seen by the two of you…and one of them still has my hat that no one can find. He probably tossed it in the nearest bin.”

“It’s interesting news. I brought some proper lunch,” Peter said as Ellen turned her attention to the clear container and thermos. “Fruit, sandwiches, and green tea.”

“Peter, you are a gem,” she said with a smile. “But I wasn’t lying to Jeff when I said I was a bit dizzy. Can we start with just a tea? I don’t want to eat only to throw up.”

“That’s absolutely fine,” he assured her. He collected their two paper cups from earlier that morning, and poured a small amount of warm green tea into each. Ellen whispered her thanks, and Peter asked, “So you feel like more is coming back?”

“Of my memory of that night, yes. It’s not that I remember more, but my impression of what I remember is clearer. The feelings I had…it was a very calculated assault. Nothing caught me by surprise. I even knew I was about to lose consciousness when it happened, and then there was nothing.”

“If it being calculated meant that you were able to defend yourself because you recognised some of the maneuvers or because you were just quick to react, then that is fine by me,” Peter said with an encouraging smile. “It’s not a bad thing that he wasn’t able to catch you off guard.”

“Yes, caught off guard in our job, very, very bad,” Ellen said in mockingly obvious agreement. She pouted playfully and Peter laughed despite the circumstances, before Ellen settled to sip her tea and sit back against her pillows. “I’m ready to go home, Peter,” she added more softly as she let her eyes flutter shut. 

“Soon Mac,” he promised. He squeezed her thigh through her sheet and blanket as he watched her quickly almost crumble but then compose herself. She was good at doing that, she’d had lots of practice. She looked back at him with a muted, tired expression on her face. “Does it feel weird,” he asked. “Being on the other side for once?”

“Very weird, but anything I can do to help find this person, I will. To conduct opportunistic, serious assaults using brute force twice in one day is…crazy.”

“And unlikely,” Peter said. Ellen looked at him sharply and frowned, as he continued. “I spoke to Danni while I was out. She’s at HQ with Homicide and Sex Crimes, and she said there’s talk among the team that you might be special, like maybe you were targeted. I’m not surprised if Jeff didn’t say anything, because it’s just a theory, but-”

“They think I was assaulted, specifically, as myself?”

“Unclear as yet,” Peter said on a sigh as he shrugged innocently and finished his tea. “I do know that yesterday they wanted to post police guards and Danni and I were like, ‘No thanks, we’re on round-the-clock surveillance here pretty much anyway’, but when I left last night there was a cop sitting outside the room, and he didn’t leave until I arrived this morning.”

“But surely if there was going to be a copy-cat attack they should be looking at Kiera’s death. It was on the other side of the city, in the morning, she’s just a girl, he used a rock, she had her neck broken-”

“I know, I know,” Peter said gently. “But you’re the fancy DSS, all right? As far as Danni could tell me, there’s just some speculation that one or both of you wasn’t actually assaulted by the same man as the others. What is making some people think it’s you are those handprints I can still see around your neck. It’s very personal.”

“And bashing someone’s face into the ground with bare hands or a rock isn’t?”

“You know what I mean,” Peter said. He shrugged again. “But if Jeff didn’t say anything then it means they’ve got nothing to go on, and it’s just a gossipy theory floating around HQ that Danni happened to overhear or be asked about. I’d let it go.”

“Okay,” Ellen said on a sigh as she gestured to the lunchbox with one hand and finished her tea with the other. “I could actually probably eat a sandwich, Peter.”

“That’s more like it!” Peter declared on a playful laugh as he ceremoniously opened the lid on the lunch he had prepared. “This is freshly baked bread with salad, grated carrot, tomato, lettuce, cheese and cucumber,” he said. “Much better than that soggy white hospital crap they plonk a bit of lettuce and cheese on for you.”

“How are you going on the house-selling and holiday fronts?” she asked as she crossed her legs and sat forward with the lid of the container on her lap, to catch any spillage from the sandwich. “Sorry I haven’t been much help on the latter yet,” she added. Peter handed her half a sandwich and she held it while she ate and listened. 

“House purchase is so far, so good. As long as they don’t pull out and the finance goes through, I’m set. As for our holidays, I haven’t booked anything yet because we need to talk about it, but I did dream up a possible itinerary over about five weeks?”

“Hit me with it,” Ellen mumbled as she ate. Anything to distract her from this new and simply ludicrous idea that whoever assaulted her was a copycat out to get her. 

“We’ll start in Alice Springs, head out and do the circuit around Uluru and King’s Canyon, and then get the train up north to Darwin and spend a few days exploring places like Kakadu. Then over to Queensland, there’s the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest, and we’ll find some beaches or islands to laze around on, before heading down to the Gold Coast and doing the same thing there. Then maybe a final stop in Sydney to see your parents if you want, but the main goal would be to get plenty of warm sun during the day, and to see lots of stars at night, what do you say?”

“Sounds brilliant,” Ellen said with a grin. Her blue eyes sparkled. “We can go as soon as the factory closes in a few weeks, and I’ve got cash in my savings to pay my way.”

“Cool,” Peter said. “Do you want me to start making arrangements then?”

“Ahuh,” she agreed happily as Peter also grinned. She put her sandwich on the lid in her lap and rubbed her fingertips along his jaw. His skin was warm, his stubble only slight thanks to an early morning shave. Peter covered her hand with his and held it steady, while he turned his head and kissed her palm. Ellen softened as she looked into his light blue eyes. “You,” she said. “Are the most important person in my life, Peter. You always will be. I want you to know that, and know it also terrifies me.”

“Same, without question,” he said softly. “I’m shitting myself now we’re actually going to try this again, but I’m excited too. Take your time, we’ll take our time.”

“We have time,” she assured him casually, as she removed her hand from his face and returned to eating her sandwich. “But let’s speed up the eating, Church,” she added, her voice mockingly stern. She quirked her lips and brow at him and he laughed.


	26. Chapter 26

TWENTY-SIX

It was Monday morning when Ellen walked into the elevator at police headquarters with Danni beside her, both of them in dark suits with their hair tied back. Ellen was holding her briefcase, but Danni’s hands were free so she pressed the button to take them upwards. 

“Are you sure I should be here?” Danni asked. 

“Yes,” Ellen answered. “You’re about to be a trainee detective, and you may as well start on this case. With Angie gone, if we need to do any more surveillance it will likely be you and me, and I’m told you spent most of the weekend at the factory helping to pack up without any of the rest of us there. I really appreciate it.”

“This is my reward?” Danni asked with a bemused smirk. “Gee, you shouldn’t have.”

Ellen laughed softly as the elevator stopped and the doors open. She pressed her lips together in a wise, smug grimace and looked sideways at Danni as they both stepped off and walked towards the meeting room; Ellen led the way. 

“Well there’s that, and there’s the fact that if I pass out I’ll need someone to catch me, and if I fall asleep you have permission to pinch me very hard.”

“Oh, funny,” Danni huffed as she rolled her eyes and Ellen chuckled. “You are feeling better, I can tell.”

“Mm,” Ellen said. She absentmindedly touched the yellowing bruises around her throat as she hesitated outside the door. She looked at Danni with a brief flicker of uncertainty in her deep blue eyes, but Danni smiled and gave her elbow a squeeze. 

“They’ll just be happy to see you on your feet,” she assured her. 

Ellen was pleased that Danni’s statement did actually hold true, with Jeff and Neil and the other detectives from Sex Crimes and Homicide working on the case all shaking her hand and welcoming her back, but very quickly the serious meeting began.

“We’ve had a quiet weekend,” Jeff said. “With a twenty-four hour police presence at the park we’ve had no further assaults, but also no sightings, and no tip-offs. We have no consistent victim statements, no DNA, and no prints. After a hectic Thursday, we could be back to a more regular pattern but we must keep the public pressure on.”

“How did you go with Hamish and Ben?” Ellen asked as she observed the two men’s photographs on the whiteboard behind Jeff. Obviously Ben had also been found; his shock of blonde hair looked almost white in the photo and neither looked happy.

“We had to let them go,” one of the other Sex Crimes detectives said. “We couldn’t charge them with anything even though it’s clear that Berger was trying to pinch a car before he was interrupted.”

“They admitted that Ben sometimes acted as a lookout,” Jeff said. “And they had started watching that section of the park because even though you can’t see the street from the bend there, it’s a good place to monitor foot traffic, and if you exit the park just back down the bend like you and your operative, Ellen, then that is the most likely direction from which a witness might emerge. However, they both deny having anything to do with any cars that might have gone missing from the same place, and we have no reports anyway. They both strongly deny being involved in the assaults.”

“Are you sure Berger wasn’t the man who attacked you?” another detective asked her.

“I’m positive,” Ellen said as she nodded. “Did he see anything of value?”

“He says that as soon as the assault began, he ran.”

Ellen looked to Danni, who was staring at the photographs over Jeff’s shoulder.

“Do you know who you saw running, after the fact?” Ellen asked her. 

“I never saw his face,” Danni said. “The man I saw was tall, thin, and wearing the baseball cap and a loose dark jacket. It was unzipped, at least partly, because I saw it flapping around him. Peter will tell you that he just saw a tall guy in a cap run away, but I was closer…It could certainly be Berger based on his physique but I couldn’t say for sure. If it was him then he’s lying; he did see the attack and didn’t run until later. It would also mean that he somehow got hold of the hat. It might have come off in the assault but it’s unlikely it sailed through the air for twenty metres and landed right beside him in between these two cars.”

“That’s our thinking as well,” Jeff said. “Berger has approached Ellen at some stage, or there was an interaction between the perp and Berger before they both fled. He’s ended up with the hat. Danni and Peter only saw Berger, they were focused on Mac.”

Danni said back in her chair, crossed her arms and nodded. She looked unimpressed even though Jeff hadn’t meant to describe their actions that night as a kind of failure.

“If that’s true,” she said. “Then like I said yesterday, Berger knows a lot more about what happened than he’s told you.”

“What if I talk to him?” Ellen asked with a raised brow. “He might be more willing to talk if I’m sitting right in front of him. There’s a difference between asking someone to ‘tell me what happened to her’ and ‘tell me what happened to me’ when you’re looking them in the eyes.”

“Are you up for that?” Jeff asked. 

Danni did her best not to snort as Ellen raised one of her eyebrows even higher.

“Yes,” she said flatly. 

“Okay,” Jeff said as he looked to a two of his colleagues. “Bring Berger and McLaren back in. But Ellen, Neil and I would like a private word about your statement first.”

“Is there a problem with it?” Ellen asked, not bothering with the whole privacy issue. It was highly likely that everyone in the room had already read, dissected and discussed her statement behind her back over the weekend anyway, on top of her condition and hospital stay. “Did you have questions? I’ll answer them now.”

“We just wanted to check something,” Jeff said warily. “Uh…gloves or no gloves?”

“No gloves,” she said with a definite nod. “His hands were cold, he was not wearing gloves. Why?”

“Three of the victim statements do mention gloves, or at least the possibility of gloves, including victim number one, whose memory is the most clear of the previous victims and whose description of the attacker is the most specific, and also the most different from yours.”

“Uh, let me try to remember it,” Ellen said as she lifted her eyes skyward and thought. 

“Victim one’s description was average height, fair skin, light or light brown hair cut very short, stocky, latex gloves, and he growled throughout the assault,” Jeff said. 

Ellen pursed her lips and nodded as she recalled the file. 

“Your description, however, is tall, athletic, strong, possible offensive training, engaged in bare hand combat, broad torso, wearing skins, he strangled you, silently-”

“For a matter of seconds,” Ellen interrupted just to make sure he kept her assault in perspective. “What happened to me was a strictly physical assault that took less than a minute, compared to the fairly prolonged sexual assault on Rachel, the first victim.”

“You need to know that we are considering the possibility that there are at least two separate attackers,” Jeff told her. “What are your thoughts on that?” he asked. 

Ellen stared at him with raised eyebrows because she already knew and she was not surprised, thanks to Danni and Peter. On reflection over the past day or two, it also began to make more sense, though it would complicate the investigation tenfold. 

“I can see how my assault might be perceived differently to the others,” she said. “And I agree that the vague descriptions from the victims in this case have always been contradictory and a real problem for us. My three questions would be, firstly, to what extent do you regard Kiera Rudonikis’ death as an anomaly also? Secondly, if there is more than one perpetrator, has there been more than one perp all along, or has he been joined by a copycat along the way? And thirdly, if that’s true, is the original perp aware of who this is, and how does he feel about it?”

“We are thoroughly investigating Kiera and her family in case that was a deliberate killing,” one of the Homicide detectives said. “Her computer is still with Tech and we expect some answers this morning. They’ve spent the last three days going through the hard drive, the social media files and Internet history. It could be a problem.”

“Why is that?” Ellen asked, looking at Kiera’s school photo on the board. Kiera was a tall, slender brunette with dark olive skin and brown eyes. “Was she a sophisticated seventeen year old computer user? Is there concerning material on the hard drive?”

“Yes, actually. It looks like she was fairly sophisticated in the way that she used the Internet, mostly underground chat rooms, and she’s tried to cover her tracks in and out. It’s nothing that Tech can’t handle, but there is a possibility that she was deliberately targeted as a result of something she has put out there on the net.”

“Pornography?” Danni asked boldly. “Any evidence she was being groomed?”

“Uh, no,” the Homicide detective said. “Look, unless Inspector Underwood beside me decides otherwise, I don’t want to pre-empt anything by saying what Tech think they’ve found until we get confirmation that this is really what we’re dealing with.”

“What are we really dealing with?” one of the Sex Crimes detectives asked, frowning in confusion. He was not the only one around the table looking concerned. “It’s the first I’m hearing of a possible motive or anything concerning on the girl’s hard drive.”

“We’ve kept this high-level until now,” Neil said, jumping in as Head of Homicide. “We only found out yesterday, and we don’t know if what we have is a motive yet. Tech was uneasy so they called me in, I’ve since included Jeff, and now I’m going to tell you, Ellen, and the detectives on this case from our three sections here today; Danni, Barry, Hayden, Steve, Nate, Drew and Louis. It does not leave this room. A report is being finalised, it will include all the transcripts and emails we can recover, and once we have all the information then we can have a more thorough discussion.”

“Come on Neil,” Ellen said with a semi-frustrated smile. He was a friend, and he was being evasive. “A thorough discussion about what? What do you, Barry and Hayden know? We’ve all taken the bait now. If you expect answers this morning and you already know what you’re talking about, then it’s unlikely to change, so just tell us.”

“Tech found some evidence on Kiera’s computer that she was offering her services in certain chat rooms. Not sexual services, but professional services.”

“What sort of professional services?” Danni asked.

“Hacking. Or at least she’s made it sound like hacking; we don’t think she is a genuine hack. It looks like she was in the position to have some information – we’re still not sure how she got it, and that is what Tech is currently trying to confirm for me – and she realised how valuable this information was, and she has tried to sell it.”

“Bank accounts?” Ellen asked.

“Bone dry. We didn’t find any cash in her room. No money had changed hands as yet. We do also know that Kiera was a model student but that she was the sole carer for her mother who has epilepsy. Her mother can’t drive, she’s got some cognitive impairments from lifelong seizures – her memory is very poor, for example – but she manages her seizures now using cannabis that Kiera used to procure for her. So the kid did put herself in the position to mix with some dodgy characters over the years.”

“She bought dope,” one of the Sex Crimes detectives stated as they looked between Neil and Jeff. The Homicide guys both nodded as Neil folded his hands on the desk. “Is that different or separate to whatever information she has sitting in her computer?”

“Oh, hang on everyone,” Danni said softly as she leant forward and looked over her shoulder towards Ellen with wide green eyes. Everyone looked at her as she then turned to Neil and her soon-to-be colleagues. “She bought marijuana for her mum?”

“Yes,” they said simultaneously. “The last buy was a week before she died,” one detective added. “Not big quantities, usually a month at a time. They had a standard arrangement. Kiera and her mum were never caught, never questioned or charged.”

“And Kiera had done this for her epileptic mum for years?” 

“That’s what Mrs Rudonikis said. Five years, although I can’t imagine a mother willingly allowing her little twelve year old girl to head out to buy dope on the street.”

“Kiera’s mother didn’t tell you who the family supplier was? What did she say about how Kiera bought drugs? Is there a phone number? Anything useful to us?”

“Kiera’s mother told us about the cannabis because we were in her home to question her and she felt compelled to admit that maybe Kiera’s death was connected to the fact that her daughter did know a drug dealer. However, her mother says she doesn’t know who that person is, she doesn’t know how Kiera initially got in touch with him or her, and she doesn’t know how to get in touch with that person herself now either. Her mother said that Kiera was given a cheap prepaid-type phone, but it’s gone.”

“We suspect,” Neil explained. “That when Kiera left her house that morning she was not going for a run as we thought. We suspect she was meeting someone at sunrise, she had the phone with her and it’s been taken after she was killed.”

“So she could have been going to do a drug deal for mum, or sell some kind of secret information?” Danni asked. “Do you know which?” She waited. Neil shook his head.

“Why, Danni?” Ellen asked. She rubbed her forehead as subtly as possible, willing the milder but still continuously pounding headache away for another half an hour. 

“Lachlan Fraser,” Danni said. She sat back in her chair with an astounded look on her face. “That job that Peter and I were working on until last week, you pulled us off because of the restructure…” She drifted off, and then addressed the room more entirely. “Our team was building up a case against a marijuana distributor and our main contact within that case was a smaller-time dealer called Lachlan Fraser. He’s got a rap sheet of minor drug offences before the law got heavy. He’s done time in lock-up but nothing serious, and he’s been out for years and back in business. We hoped that by sidling up to him as buyers and then upping our order over time, we could be put in touch with the people more worthy of a long-term prison sentence.”

“You think this dealer Fraser was the Rudonikis dealer?” Neil asked.

“Listening now, I’m almost positive. Myself and a colleague met with Fraser several times over six months, and on at least three occasions he talked about or we saw him preparing a package for someone he described as, and I quote, ‘a teenage girl helping her mum out with seizures and stuff’. ‘Good kid,’ he said. ‘Friend of the family.’”

“Did he use her name?” one of the other Homicide detectives asked.

“Not that I can recall. Peter might have more luck though,” Danni said as she glanced at Ellen. Ellen was pale but she nodded and her lips were pursed in thought. 

“So what does this mean?” Jeff asked. “If this is true, then do we have a connection between Kiera and Ellen as targets? Surely Ellen would have had a hands-off role in that drug case, Danni. It would be you and I’m assuming Peter Church who Lachlan actually knew…and I take it he didn’t know you were cops either.”

“No, we were undercover and as far as we’re aware those covers are still tight,” she admitted. “We also never met that teenage girl he spoke of.”

“And I’ve never met any of them,” Ellen added. “I’ve never spoken to Lachlan Fraser. I certainly don’t know the Rudonikis family.”

“We think they know you,” one of the Homicide detectives admitted softly but surely. The room fell silent as everyone turned to look back at them in surprise. “We don’t know how yet,” he went on. “That’s what Tech is trying to ascertain. Kiera seems to have presented herself online as someone who could turn over the odd problem cop, for a price. Your names are on her computer, Detective.”

“What?” Ellen asked, wide-eyed. They both nodded. “My names?”

“Yes,” Neil said more officially. “It says, ‘Ellen Mackenzie, also known as Kristine Callum’…which we’ve confirmed actually was your name until you were eighteen?”

Ellen folded her arms over her chest and glared at them.

“It’s the name my parents gave me when they adopted me. When I was seventeen I found a letter from my biological parents calling me Ellen. I changed my name back to what it should have been when I left school in Sydney, before I began university here, so yes, that is correct. Would any of you like to elaborate on why I am only just hearing about this now, and not at some point over the past three days?”

“I only found out yesterday,” Neil assured her. “It took time for Tech to realise what they had, and they’ve spent day and night on it since, they’ve been working on Kiera’s computer all weekend. They saw her advert and realised this was allegedly a police officer’s security being put at risk by our murder victim, but because your name wasn’t released to the press the other day it took a while for them to connect Kiera’s death with your assault. As soon as I was made aware, I asked for a complete and thorough audit. I’ve been assured I will have that by the end of this meeting.”

“Wonderful,” Ellen said, clearly unimpressed. “What else is on her computer, besides my current name and the name that only a handful of people in this world actually know about? Address? Physical description? Car registration number? The location of my undercover unit?”

“Physical description,” Neil said. “She said she had more, but interested parties had to contact her privately and they would arrange a transaction from there. Again, we are trying to find out who contacted her, we’re retrieving as much data as we can about who she spoke to online and when, and we’re looking for any more information.”

“But how and why?” Danni asked obviously. “Why would a seventeen year old girl sell out an undercover cop she doesn’t even know? And Mac’s not just some slummy undercover cop, but a DSS who barely even goes undercover anymore. How would Kiera even know all that stuff about her? I didn’t even know Mac’s previous name until just now, and depending on the physical description it might mean that Kiera has actually seen Mac; maybe she’s watched her or has seen photographs. Did she have a photo? Even if the connection is somehow Lachlan Fraser, and that part is not just a coincidence, then it’s still unlikely given the secluded lifestyles that we all lead.”

“We’re trying to find the answers to those questions,” Neil said. “As soon as we can.”

“I was at my home yesterday, and last night,” Ellen said pointedly. “Alone.”

“I know. We had a car sitting across the street,” Neil said. 

“Oh, thanks for telling me!” Mac said with a humourless laugh. “Jesus, I didn’t even notice it.” She rubbed her face again. “So you’re telling me that you think Kiera’s death and my assault had absolutely nothing to do with the surveillance operation we were running, or the other assaults that were taking place, even though I was caught off guard right outside the park where those other assaults did take place?”

“They would have had to follow us from work,” Danni said with a deep frown. “Or know that she was going to be there in the first place. And if that’s true, they had to have known there would be other police around. That’s very risky, and Mac’s involvement in this operation is not common knowledge outside this room.”

“No,” Neil said seriously. “It isn’t.”


	27. Chapter 27

TWENTY-SEVEN

“Did you get onto Angie or Oscar?” Danni asked as Ellen met her in a quiet part of the hallway just down from the interview rooms, where Hamish Berger was waiting. 

“No,” Ellen said on a sigh. She put her hands on her hips and looked into Danni’s concerned eyes. “I left a message on both of their mobiles, and on their home’s landline answering machine.”

“Their home?” Danni asked with a wry smirk. 

“Oh,” Ellen huffed as her brow crinkled. “His parent’s home. Close enough. My head!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Danni said with a laugh. She affectionately touched Ellen’s nearest upper arm and grinned. “I knew what you meant. Did you call Peter?”

“Not yet. He’s going to blow his top and ask a million questions, and I just can’t deal with that right now. I did call Eve though, to let her know I was still alive, to arrange coffee, and to ask how her exhibit went. It was a fruitful twenty minute distraction.”

“What’s she like?”

“Uh, like an older version of Amy. She has straighter hair dyed to almost black, with one of those fashionable grey strips in it. She’s young as you’d expect, fifty-two.”

“She was fifteen? That’s tough.”

“Something like that,” Ellen said vaguely as she sighed and leant against the hall. She let her eyes fall shut, but before Danni could ask, she said, “I’m fine, just tired”.

“I didn’t say a word,” Danni said with a knowing smile. “Thanks for letting me back you up in this.”

“You were the first on the scene, you got the best look at him running away…who knows, Berger might have even looked over his shoulder at some point and seen you. He’ll know why we’re both there. How does my bruising look?”

“Suitably intimidating,” Danni assured her. Ellen opened her eyes and smirked. 

“Let’s go then,” she said.

Danni allowed Ellen to lead the way along the hall and into the interview room, where Hamish Berger’s tall frame was hunched over the white table. He was picking at his nails with a vague expression on his face, but he looked up when he heard the door open and two sets of high heels enter. 

His expression flickered with surprise and worry when he recognised Ellen, and he followed her with his eyes, as she walked across the small room and took a seat opposite him. He glanced at Danni beside her as well, and Danni managed a polite smile in his direction. 

“Hamish, is it?” Ellen asked firstly. He pressed his lips together and nodded, as she reached for the recording equipment and flicked it on. She talked through the formalities, confirmed the date and time, got Hamish to state his full name and date of birth, and introduced herself and Danni as the attending officers. Once that was done, she looked into Hamish’s wary brown eyes and asked, “Do you know who I am, Mr Berger?”

“Yeah, and you can call me Hamish,” he said. “You’re the woman from the park, the night it was raining. Ben’s seen you a few times, and I have too…a few other nights when I was hanging out on the street outside the park. Like I told the other Detectives yesterday...Ben said your name was Leanne, not Ellen Mackenzie. You’re a cop.”

“Which other nights did you see me?” Ellen asked. 

“Um…well there was the night it was raining,” he said. “That was like, Friday before last or something? Then last Wednesday, and Thursday.”

“Where were you standing when you saw me on those last two nights?” she asked. 

“Um…kind of down the street. There’s a bench I sit on, sometimes, to watch traffic ‘n stuff. It’s not very well lit though, so it’s hard to see me there? I saw you arrive, same time both days, and Wednesday I saw you get in your car and leave after your run. I watch the cars…it’s kind of my thing.”

“We know you like cars, Hamish,” Danni said pointedly. 

“Uh…yeah.” He chuckled, embarrassed, and ran a hand through his brown hair.

“What did you see besides cars on Wednesday night?” Ellen asked.

“A few people going about their business I guess, people walking home from the train station down the way, like in work clothes. Saw the regulars. There’s a blonde girl who runs really fast on the same track you use. I remember her cos she wears really tight running clothes like fit girls do, y’know? All hot pink sports bras ‘n stuff.”

“Have you seen her there often?” Ellen asked curiously. “Is she a regular?”

“I reckon so. But see, I don’t really know, cos it was Ben who put me onto this spot for, uh, watching traffic, and that day I first saw you, in the rain, that was only my second time there. He was showin’ me around and we were, uh, making plans.”

“I see,” Ellen said as she pursed her lips. “So on Wednesday night you saw this blonde women. Was she short, tall-”

“Kind of short,” he said. “Shorter than you, but same kind of thinness I guess, only more fit, more muscular-looking. She’d run rings around you, uh, Detective.”

“I’m sure,” Ellen said as she managed a thoughtful smile. “Ever spoken to her?”

“No. Why?”

“Did you see her leave on Wednesday night as well?”

“Yep,” he said with a certain nod. “She drives this crappy old car, it’s beige…like they still make beige cars! It’s a pretty decent old Mazda of course, but just…not awesome value for a job. Then I saw you arrive, uh, actually, you probably arrived about ten minutes before she left, then you sat in your car on your bloody phone or something. Saw you do that Wednesday and Thursday. What’s that all about?”

“Work,” she said.

“Oh. Right, none o’ my business, there’s me told. Well, then you got out and went for your run and came back. Wednesday night, you left, and then this van up the street pulled out right in front of another car. Vroom! There was nearly a collision…reckon it was following you, cos it caught up pretty fast down at the intersection too. That was you cops, watching the park because of those attacks on them women, right?”

“Correct,” Ellen said with a simple nod. “Did you know about those when Ben first introduced you to the park?”

“I guess,” he said. He shrugged calmly. “I didn’t know it was that park, though, or like exactly that track. The police told me yesterday. Ben just said it was a good spot that lots of people ignore and don’t pay much attention to, and when I saw it I thought it was good too, so we hung out there a bit to see what we could see.”

“Do either of you live near the park?”

“Ben does, yeah, but he didn’t have nothing to do with those assaults either.”

“So Wednesday night,” Ellen said. “You saw nothing unusual or suspicious?”

“Nuh, well not except for that van screaming out of its park after you, and I haven’t seen anything suspicious the whole time I’ve been going there. People have their routines, you know? I like watching them. I’ve seen that white van there a bit, no one ever gettin’ in or out, but now I understand it better, cos it’s the place where the women were attacked. Are you gonna ask me about Thursday? Everyone else has.”

“Why not?” Ellen asked as she sat back in her chair and pursed her lips. “What did you see on Thursday from your special spot in the shadows?”

“The usual really,” he said. “Oh, the blonde woman didn’t show up, but I figure it’s late night shopping or something, maybe she doesn’t run on Thursdays. It was the first Thursday I was there, so I wouldn’t know. I like watching her though, she’s hot.”

Danni snorted and Hamish looked at her, or more specifically he looked at her large chest partly obscured by a knitted blouse and blazer. He raised his eyebrows before he looked her in the eyes. 

“It’s okay Senior Constable,” he said. “You’re hot too.”

“Mr Berger,” Ellen said sternly. “Eyes back over here please. Thursday night?”

“Right,” he said as he frowned and looked back to Ellen. “Then you arrived and sat in your car for a bit like normal, and you crossed the road and went into the park. I remember seein’ the van there again, cos I’d really noticed it the night before, and I was really interested to see if it would follow you away again. Also…well…there was this car I’d had my eye on. Old model BMW, good parts. It hadn’t moved all the time I’d been watching, it was always in the same spot, no one ever came near it, there wasn’t a streetlight nearby, and I wanted to get a closer look. So while you was in the park, that’s what I did. Check out if there’s an alarm and that kind of thing, y’know?”

“Ahuh,” Ellen said, unimpressed but hopeful of what was to come. 

“When you came back, I heard the beep-beep of your car lock, but I was still checking out this car’s wheels. I knew if I stood up you’d probably see me and think it was weird, and you might call out and I’d have to talk to you or run…it’d be suss either way. I really didn’t want to tip anyone off that I was casing the area, didn’t want you to recognise me, so I stayed low between the cars. I knew you’d leave quick and there wasn’t anyone else around I could see, so I figured thirty-seconds max.”

“Then what?”

“Well then out of nowhere this runner comes past, just like sprints past me between the two cars, running towards you and the cop van, and I’m hiding still, but I heard you yelp, you know like gasp I guess, and there was some kind of scuffle and a thud, so I looked out thinking what the fuck is going on? I stuck my head out and saw you on your hands and feet trying to get up. This guy was standing over you, and before you got off your hands and feet he bent his arm up and just dropped his elbow straight down with one really sharp jab in your back. You pretty much went splat, right, and it was kind of raining and pretty windy I guess, but I reckon I could still hear you, cos it was like you couldn’t breathe and you were making this real awful wheezing sound.”

“What then?” Ellen asked quickly, not wanting to revisit how she’d sounded. Her stomach was already churning, because she hadn’t found a way to put that part of the assault into words up inside her head yet, but Hamish had just done it for her. 

“He dropped down beside you and put his knee into your back…you must be pretty bruised up, right?”

“I am a bit,” she said. “Then?”

“Well then I had to, like, decide what the fuck to do!” Hamish exclaimed. “I’ve seen guys go at each other in bars and outside nightclubs and shit like that, but I’ve never seen a bloke drop himself on top of a woman like this guy was doing to you. He grabbed your head while you were on your guts and started slamming your face into the ground. At one point you shouted out for someone, someone called Peter? It was real loud and desperate-like, and I thought ‘oh fuck, she’s in trouble, I should go do something’, but I literally had no idea what I could do. I mean, what if this guy didn’t just run away, what if he had a knife or something? But you were totally fighting back too, he was like trying to grab you and you kept twisting and kicking out and I reckon you almost, almost got away. This dude was just like lightning, the way he ended up grabbing your head and kind of spinning you onto your back, and then wham…he dropped your head onto the ground like it was some toy, and you stopped moving. I reckoned you were dead; I can’t believe you’re sitting here, for reals. It’s amazing.”

“No thanks to you,” Danni said pointedly. “What happened next?”

“Uh, well, this guy, once you stopped moving, uh…Detective Mackenzie, see, well it was hard to tell exactly what happened next cos he kind of sat on top of you and it was dark and he was leaning over ya, and I thought he was squeezing your head or your face or something, but judging by the bruising around your neck I can see, I’m gonna say what I saw him doing was tryin’ to strangle ya. Meanwhile I’m still just thinking what the fuck, how the fuck am I gonna get out of this now? I know I hadn’t pinched the car yet, but how else am I gonna explain being down here in the gutter?”

“And then?” Danni asked on an uninterested sigh. Beside her, Ellen was silent. 

“Um…I dunno if I should say,” he said as he looked over at Ellen. Blue eyes met brown as Hamish seemed to genuinely soften. “You were kind of unconscious, obviously, and uh, I don’t reckon you remember this at all.”

“I remember everything up until I lost consciousness.”

“Yeah, exactly. Uh…”

“This is a formal interview, Mr Berger,” Ellen reminded him. “We need you to tell us everything you remember. Obviously we need to find this individual. You were unsure what you should do on Thursday night, and I know that’s a confronting thing to witness, it’s okay to freeze up, but that is not what you should be doing now.”

“Yeah, yeah I know,” he said. He bit his bottom lip before adding, “And Ben did say you’d spoken to him…he kind of likes you, I think. I mean, most chicks don’t give invisible guys like us the time of day unless they’re wasted. You seemed normal. I guess, though, you just thought maybe we’d been attacking those women, right?”

“It crossed my mind,” Ellen admitted. “But I am certain that you did not attack me, Hamish, so please, continue.”

“Well, he was grabbing onto your neck or face or whatever, and he was sitting on top of you…y’know, like chicks sit on top of guys if they’re having sex. All I could hear at that point was like the wind and the rain and it was really creepy cos I thought you were dead, y’know, and he leant down and…I’m dead certain he licked your face.”

“Excuse me?” Danni asked, as she did her best not to screw up her face in disgust. She glanced at Ellen, whose guarded expression concealed all but the subtle flicker of stern thoughtfulness in her eyes. 

“Yeah,” Hamish said as he began to address Danni specifically. It was easier than looking into Ellen’s eyes. “It kind of looked like he was kissing her on the lips, but not. More like licking. He definitely put his face on top of hers and was doing some weird lapping motion with his head, like a puppy. My mouth just dropped open, cos I remember a bit of rain hitting my lips, and I was just like what the actual fuck?! But at the same time, it was super quick, we’re talking a minute or two for the whole thing I reckon, and this guy almost as soon as he started being a total crazy nut-job fucker, he gets up, grabs her hat and sprints back in my direction. I duck out of sight, but I don’t reckon I got out of the way in time, I reckon he saw me, cos he drops the hat right beside me, and get this, you know what he says?”

“What?” Danni asked with a raised brow.

“He drops the hat mid-sprint and scoffs and says, ‘Here, Perve’ over his shoulder. Like I’m the pervert? I never hurt a woman in my whole fucking life, all right? I use porn, okay, I’ve seen weird licking shit before, but I never done that, I never hit a woman, I never even pinched a woman or swore at her or threatened her or nothing. And Ben told me this Leanne from the park was a bit all right, you know? Not some awful person deserving of violence like that, but this dude’s just licked her face after bashing her head in and trying to kill her, and she’s called out for this other guy who isn’t actually coming to help and she’s just lying there and, fuck me, I’m the perve?”

“The gall of him,” Danni muttered. 

“Fucking ridiculous,” Hamish huffed. He shrugged and looked helpless. “So I just thought, like, I gotta get out of there. I heard a car door slam, then a few more doors, and now I’m thinking, well, there was that van following her out real fast just the night before…if they were planning to do that again, maybe they’re involved, maybe she’s got a stalker, maybe they’re gonna get out of that van and scoop up her body and drive it away somewhere and I should get the fuck out of the area real damn fast. So I picked up the hat and put it on, cos like…it would help disguise me…and I ran. I hate running, man. I truly hate it, but I reckon I never ran so fast in all my life.”

“Did you call for an ambulance?” Danni asked. “Did you make any effort to report the assault you’d witnessed?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t say nothing to that.” He turned to look at Ellen and frowned. He was blushing when he added a quiet, “Sorry”.

“Where’s the hat?” Danni asked. “Police searched your house but couldn’t find it.”

“Hell, I’m not a complete moron,” Hamish said indignantly. “I dumped it in a rubbish bin a few streets away from where I live. It was bin day on Friday, everyone had their bins out. I wasn’t gonna accidentally get caught with this dead woman’s hat and be put in jail for killing her when I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

“Can you describe the man?” Ellen asked. “You’ve been very helpful Hamish, I appreciate your honesty today. Why didn’t you tell the other officers this?”

“Wasn’t none of their business,” he said with a deep frown. “Figure you should know. And all I really saw was a tall guy, real muscly chest but tiny little waist…you know, like he’s really fit or something? And wearing those running tights, and black shoes. I tried not to look at his face, I didn’t want him to know I’d seen him, and it was kind of far away and dark and drizzlin’…I do reckon he had a beard though, bit like mine.”

“Do you know if he was wearing gloves?” Danni asked.

“Yeah, nah, no gloves,” Hamish confirmed. “Just, like, bare hands. Real creepy.” He looked to Ellen and repeated, “I’m real glad you’re all right, Detective. Honest, and not just cos you’re obviously a real important cop who was tryin’ to do good, but just as like if you were a normal person out for a run, I’m still really glad you’re all right. You fought like a bitch, uh, ma’am.”

“Thank you Mr Berger,” Ellen assured him as gently but as seriously as she could. It was just what she needed, really, a cowardly car thief with a soft spot for the ladies.


	28. Chapter 28

TWENTY-EIGHT

Peter was already in Ellen’s office when she and Danni returned. He had been entrusted with the job of going through her filing cabinet and censoring their hard-copy personnel files with a thick, black marker before they were archived. The complete digital files were only accessible by authorised badge number, and even though the paper records that Ellen had kept would likely be destroyed or tucked away in a dark corner never to be revealed to the world, she was taking no chances. 

With reading glasses on, he was scanning through Angie’s file and blacking out almost everything; her height, her weight, information on identifiable marks like the photograph of a detailed black and white lotus flower tattoo he never knew she had on her bum, plus the dates she graduated the academy and completed probation and entered undercover, and information like her parent’s numerous phone numbers, addresses and email addresses that had been provided to Ellen every time Angie’s parents – her next of kin – changed their details. 

He heard Ellen enter while his head was bent over the file, and he didn’t look up.

“How’d it go, beautiful?” he asked. 

“Friggin’ fantastic, handsome,” Danni replied in a dry tone. 

Peter flinched and lifted his head at the unexpected voice and reply, only to see the two of them standing side-by-side, arms folded, both smirking. Ellen’s face quickly turned serious, however, and she shut the office door and closed the blinds, even though hardly anyone else was in the factory. The tech guys were packing up old recording and surveillance equipment, but they were way up in the back rooms working and chatting and generally leaving Peter well alone. 

“Problem?” he asked as Danni flopped down onto the couch beneath the window. She looked drained and concerned, and a quick scan of Ellen’s own face and posture revealed a pale, pinched look that either meant that she was feeling unwell, stressed, angry, or all of the above. Peter stood from her chair and ushered her around the desk and into her own seat, a hand briefly at her back. “What happened?”

Danni had lain down on the couch and was dangling her legs over the side, as Ellen looked to Peter with a grimace and twitch in the side of her lip. 

“Do you remember Lachlan Fraser talking about a teenage girl he supplied cannabis to for her epileptic mother?” Ellen asked.

“Yeah,” Peter said as he nodded. “We saw him making up the oil one time when we were at his place. I asked him what he was doing. Why?”

“Kiera Rudonikis was his buyer,” Danni said. “I’m pretty sure, unless there’s another teenage girl out there who buys weed for her mother’s epilepsy, which is possible but unlikely, given that they actually live in the same neighbourhood.”

“The girl who was killed on Thursday bought weed off Lachie, our main man in the case you and I were running?” Peter asked. “That’s…so bizarre.”

“It gets worse,” Ellen said. “As part of the Homicide investigation, they seized all of Kiera’s computers. She knows who I am.”

“What?” Peter asked, half-laughing. “As if.”

Ellen shrugged, helpless to explain it any better. 

“She has been trawling some not very charming chat rooms and basically saying, ‘Dear criminals of Melbourne, I know an undercover cop called Ellen Mackenzie or Kristine Callum or whatever – who cares what her name is, actually, cos you might know her by any number of names – and this is what she looks like and if you think you might want to know more, please contact me privately and we’ll discuss terms’.”

“It makes no sense,” Danni said with her face covered by her hands, as Peter looked between them with an open mouth and a deep frown settling over his forehead. He stared at Ellen for long seconds as she sat back in her chair and sighed, resigned. 

“I’m sorry, but what?” Peter asked. “We are talking about the seventeen year old schoolgirl, right?”

“I.T. have verified it,” Ellen said with a shrug. “It was her computer, her IP address, they have her handle on the chat rooms and they’ve got records of her putting this out there onto corners of the net that the police know very well, but the average person would never find. We don’t know how much she was asking for, in handing over any other details about me she might have known, but her internet history was full of visits to the website of a clinic in Europe that she might have thought could help her mother’s condition. It would have cost thousands, and if she was smart, she could have known that she could ask for many, many thousands of dollars for this.”

“She could have asked Lachlan about the value of the information,” Danni pointed out. “They could have had a discussion…he might even know more about it.”

“Are they talking to him?” Peter asked, eyes wide. “Have they brought him in?”

“Homicide are doing that as we speak,” Ellen said. “Danni and I interviewed Hamish Berger and got him to talk, quite easily actually. Then we went and sat down with Neil and Jeff and had a serious discussion about why I wasn’t told this immediately when they found out, whether I was still in hospital or not, and why yesterday my house was under police guard without my knowledge…for fuck’s sake!” 

Ellen broke away from the conversation in a huff and opened her desk drawer for the packet of painkillers she kept there; her breathing was shallow, her heart was racing. Peter had a cup of black tea on her desk and as she picked up the mug she realised the tea was cold, but it would do. She swallowed two of the painkillers and rubbed her forehead. Tears pricked her eyes when Peter’s hand gently rested on the shoulder nearest to him. He gave her a tender squeeze through the thick shoulder of her blazer.

“What are we talking about here?” Peter asked in a steady, calm voice. “Are we talking about your address being put out there on the internet? Are we talking about a photograph, or video? Are we talking about a list of aliases you’ve used?”

“At least you all don’t feature,” Ellen said instead of answering his question directly. “So my team is safe, it’s just me, which is part of what we don’t understand yet.”

“How much information, Ellen?” Peter asked.

“Homicide Tech found an encrypted media clip attached to the ad. There is a physical description listed with my names as part of the initial offer, but it’s fairly vague and you couldn’t pick me out of a lineup based on the words alone. It’s the fact she’s named me as Ellen Mackenzie, and as Kristine Callum, which is fairly concerning given that I haven’t gone by that name in nearly two decades, and also damaging is the fact of this media clip we only just saw before we came straight back here. After speaking to Hamish Berger, it really put the icing on the cake of my day.”

“How bad is it?” Peter asked. Someone had tried to blackmail the pair of them seven years earlier by sending Ellen photographs of the two of them having sex, taken in one of their cheap motel rooms without their knowledge, but this was much worse. 

“It’s bad,” Danni said when Ellen failed to reply. “It’s silent video filmed by an amateur in a Woolworths’ car park of Mac loading up her boot with groceries, and you can see her car, and part of her licence plate. And you get a really good look at her figure because it’s shot from an angle that looks directly at the boot. It zooms in on her face, both profile and she actually turns to look almost right at the camera. Then it cuts to her waiting by her letterbox out the front of her house. You can see the number on the letterbox. Again, it zooms in and out to show you her whole self. A car pulls up, she smiles, so you see the smile too, and she gets in, and the video stops.”

“So about a minute of footage, perhaps. How old is the tape?” Peter asked Ellen as he leant on the side of her desk and looked down at her. “Was your hair the length it is now, or was it short like from a few years ago…what timeframe are we talking about here? How long has she been putting this so-called ‘ad’ out there?”

“It’s recent,” Ellen said. She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair so that she could look up at him without straining her neck. “I don’t remember the shop exactly, but it was probably a few weeks ago. Me waiting outside the front of my house, however, that doesn’t happen every day. That was your car, Peter, from last Sunday.”

“When I picked you up to take you to lunch?”

“Yeah. So much for a first date, right?” she asked on a quiet sigh, before adding, “But don’t worry, you can’t be identified in the video because of the tint on your car windows, and you can’t see the licence plate, you’re fine.”

“I’m not actually worried about me right now, Mac,” Peter assured her with as kind a smile he could manage without laughing. She had to be kidding, right? Like he gave a shit about his own safety right at the moment. “So let me get this right,” Peter said. “Someone has been filming you, say, for the last month. Then no more than a week ago a seventeen year old girl posts an ad in a few chat rooms offering to turn over an undercover cop in exchange for money, and she posts that video with just enough to suck them in – the number on the house, part of the licence plate, good shots of your profile and face and figure and mannerisms – and on Thursday this girl is killed.”

“The ads were all posted on Monday night,” Ellen confirmed. “Kiera was dead Thursday morning. She covered her tracks on her computer, tried to hide it from her history, encrypt and password-protect what she could, or erase it all together. Homicide Tech found the first ad on Friday afternoon, but didn’t realise how serious it was at first. It was Sunday morning before Neil was told what was going on…Tech hadn’t recognised my name or made the connection that I had also been assaulted on Thursday, but Neil made that connection immediately, obviously. They had the video fixed up by yesterday afternoon. I was at home all yesterday. No one called me.”

“Maybe they thought you were still in hospital,” Peter suggested. Ellen shrugged.

“Whatever,” she said. “Looks like I’m changing my name and selling up now too.”

“They think this is why Kiera was killed?” Peter asked as he looked to Danni, who had sat herself back up and was combing her straight, dark blonde hair with her fingers. “Are they discounting Kiera as the sixth victim now?”

“Not entirely, not yet,” Danni said. “But this is what I was trying allude to on the weekend when I said there was talk that there might be more than one perp. It already felt dodgy, and I assure you both I knew absolutely nothing of these finer details, but there was a bit of mumbling…something about Kiera and Mac just not fitting the perp’s standard M.O. It’s turned out to be accurate, I am so sorry.”

“And, wait, hang on,” Peter said as his frown deepened. He looked back to Ellen. “What about the man who assaulted you?” he asked. “Ellen? Is your assault a separate event now as well? Because if this girl sold you out – for God only knows what reason – then someone might have bought in, sure, but you were still attacked right outside the park where our perp is known to operate. Who else knew you would be there, at that date, at that time, except our team and a dozen guys over at HQ?”

“That’s the million dollar question right now,” Ellen said as she leant forward, rested her elbows on the desk, and used them to prop her hands up over her face. She groaned deeply and tried to take a deep breath, as she felt Peter’s warm hand settle on the back of her neck. 

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”

“If it’s true, then I don’t understand why I’m still alive,” Ellen mumbled into her palms. “The purpose would surely be to kill me. It could be so easy, even with a small knife shoved into a pocket…why didn’t that happen?”

“Maybe he thought you were dead,” Danni said. “We know it was an amateur attempt at strangulation, and there was blood coming out of your mouth. You were clearly breathing when I knelt beside you, but to the untrained eye it looked bad. It’s just lucky for us perhaps that it wasn’t as bad as it looked…but on that positive note, do you want to lie down or something Mac? You’re doing really well, like Hamish said, you’re fighting like a bitch here, but you do kind of still have that concussion.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Ellen huffed mid-groan into her hands. She couldn’t stop the tears from trickling out of her shielded eyes or her voice from cracking. “Yeah, I need to lie down somewhere dark. It’s been a really long day under fluoro lights.”

“I’ll take you home,” Peter said in a soft voice as he gave her neck a rub and watched her very subtly wipe tears from her face with the palms already covering it. 

“Not to her home you won’t,” Danni said. “Her location is need-to-know. Mine or yours?”

“Okay, mine,” Peter said. “We’ll take my car as well. No offence, Danni-”

“None taken. Look, there’s actually nothing to suggest that Kiera gave information like Mac’s address to anyone in particular, and there’s nothing to suggest that our residences are compromised as well, but just take extra precautions, okay? I’ll-”

She stopped talking when the phone rang on Ellen’s desk and Ellen flinched at the sudden noise. 

“I’ll get the phone,” Danni said as she jumped up, to stop Ellen or Peter from reaching out for the receiver when they needed to focus on getting Ellen’s headache under control. “Detective Mackenzie’s phone, this is Senior Constable Mayo.”

“Danni, hi!” Angie said, sounding panicked and breathless. “We’ve just come in for a late lunch and we’ve got missed calls from you and Mac, and a message from Mac on the Pierce answering machine saying ‘call me!’ What’s happened? Is she okay?”

“Uh, yes, look Mac’s okay, but can you hang on a second Ange?” Danni asked. 

“Sure, sure.”

Danni covered the phone’s mouthpiece with one hand and looked over at Peter and Ellen. Peter was subtly picking Ellen’s briefcase off the floor where she had dumped it before taking her seat. He had a hand on the back of her chair and was turning it very slowly towards him, in preparation for them both to make a quick exit. 

“I’ll tell her what’s going on?” Danni asked them. 

“Yes, thank you Danni,” Ellen said on a sigh as she wiped her patchy face and stood. “If this is an inside job, they need to take precautions. I’m so sorry-”

“No, no, this is not your fault,” Danni assured her with a wide-eyed but stern expression. She reached out and briefly clasped Ellen’s wrist to comfort her, before gesturing for them both to go. Ellen barely met her eyes and looked half-asleep as she turned to walk out of the office. Peter waved at Danni and mimed for her to call him later, and she nodded and waved in return before he also left. 

*

An hour later, Peter walked into his darkened bedroom from the ensuite with a square fabric face washer that he had dampened with hot water. His was the only room in the recently sold house that had special blackout blinds to help him sleep during the days after long stints undercover or on surveillance operations at night. It was still light outside, but with the ensuite door and the door to the hallway both shut the room was seriously dark. Ellen had dragged herself from the ensuite into his bed and was curled up on her right side, still in her suit. Only her shoes had been kicked off at some point over the past thirty minutes in which she had been bent over his toilet, throwing up. 

“Still conscious, boss?” Peter asked softly, jokingly, as he perched at her back. He folded the washer up into a thick strip and laid it around her neck. He then eased the clip from her hair and combed it out. Ellen had her arms up over her face and was sniffling quietly, unwilling or unable to speak to him. “That’s better, I hope,” he said anyway, before tugging loosely on the collar of her suit jacket. “Can I get you into a flannel shirt or something before you sleep it off?” he asked. “Come on, let’s take the blazer off at least. It’s going to need washing and it’s too warm for jackets in here.” 

Ellen propped herself up on a shaky arm and allowed Peter to draw the coat off her back and arms. She weakly and apathetically un-tucked her blouse from her trousers, then collapsed back onto her side. The face washer had slipped so she laid it back around her neck and shut her eyes. Peter stroked her hair behind her ear and sighed. 

“Sorry,” she mumbled. Her voice was choked. 

“It’s okay, beautiful,” he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice, because on the inside he was terrified for her. 

Ellen’s headache had been a constant since she regained consciousness, but it had seemed to be getting better. Then again, perhaps it was getting better, but the strong painkillers she had been on in hospital had masked just how much pain she was originally in. That, and she had likely taken fewer painkillers throughout the morning, so it only seemed worse now. Peter knew that, rationally, a mixture of busy-ness and bravado on Ellen’s part was more likely to have caused the migraine than any sudden backwards step. He still hated to see her sick, though. His stomach was lurching too. 

“Peter,” Ellen said softly into the dark. “Berger said the man who assaulted me licked my face like a dog, he told me the noises I made as I fought. It’s all so disgusting and raw; I’m struggling not to think about it. I don’t feel very beautiful at all right now.”

“I know,” he said sadly. “You are, Elle, but today it’s more important that you feel safe enough to sleep. Only Danni and I know you’re here. We’re in lockdown.”

“I know, I’m okay,” she said. She rolled onto her back and her wet, full eyes looked up at him in the dark. “I would like a shirt though, love, if you have a spare. These clothes are sweaty and tight and I just need to breathe more. Something cotton?”

“I have plenty of shirts. Can you make it through a shower?” Peter asked. “You could cover your eyes, we could keep your hair dry. I know it’s bright in there but even if you stand under the warm water for a minute you’ll feel a hundred times better.”

“I’d need help,” she whispered shyly. “It’s not how I want you to see me again. I’m bruised, I’m too thin right now, from stress and not eating right, and I’m so sorry-”

“Shh,” Peter said as he continued to stroke her hair. “Don’t apologise for your body, and since you just called me ‘love’ I’m going to just come right out and say that I love you. I know that you know that Mac, so I’m going to help you in the shower for just a minute or two, then you can sleep in a cool, clean shirt. You’ll feel better, trust me.”

“Unfortunately I do,” she quipped, still not without her droll sense of humour. 

Peter chuckled and leant forward to kiss her clammy temple as she playfully tried to swat him away, despite the crinkle in her forehead that registered her pain. 

“Peter,” she said as he stood to help her up. “I do love you. I know you know as well, but like I said last week I think – and I’m so embarrassed – but no one’s ever said they’re in love with me before, I’ve never been in love before. I’m like those adults that still don’t know how to use apostrophes. I’ve never even made love, exactly.”

“Yes you have, we just never called it that,” Peter said with a gentle sort of confidence as he took her hands and got her to sit and then stand. So far, she hadn’t fainted, and that was his main concern. “And if you really don’t remember, then I do,” he assured her. “Just think about how much more honest and connected we are with each other compared to seven or eight years ago…that will make a big difference, I promise, but I’ll convince you of these things through demonstration when you don’t have a raging migraine and I’m not scared shitless by this turn of events, okay love?”

“Okay,” she said on a tired sigh. The demonstration sounded promising, though. “But don’t be scared,” she added as they walked into the ensuite. She scrunched up her eyes against the mid-afternoon light as Peter put himself between her and the window. She stepped into his space to try to make it darker, but they were the same height, so she had to duck her head and close her eyes. Peter opened the shower door and turned the water on with one hand, while the other held her elbow to keep her balanced.

“No need to be scared, huh?” he asked vaguely, as he also took the chance to look over his shoulder and out the narrow bathroom window. It overlooked the side fence and the solid brick wall of the house behind it. His heart was pounding, rampant and pained. He always expected the worst at that window, a sneering face or a raised weapon or both, but there was no one there. There never was.

“That’s right,” Ellen said softly. She could hear and feel Peter breathing deeply; his chest nearly touched hers on every inhalation. She wondered how close he was to hyperventilating, and where the anxiety had suddenly come from. “I’m going to be fine,” she added with her eyes still shut, a gesture of trust in her own words that she hoped he appreciated. She blindly found his hands with her own. “We’re safe, Peter.”

For now, they both thought, as Peter helped Ellen unbutton her blouse.


	29. Chapter 29

TWENTY-NINE

Angie sat at the kitchen bench and watched Oscar check his parent’s guns. Charlie owned two old hunting rifles and had special permits stored with the weapons because of their use on his farm. It was the silver handgun that Oscar was carefully polishing and loading with ammunition that surprised her. It was registered to Shirley. 

“How long has she had it?” Angie asked. 

“Five years or so,” Oscar said. “After you and I came up here last time, and that asshole followed me up and tried to kill us because I got his own mother arrested, I got mum involved in the nearest police-run shooting club. It’s legal to have a handgun if you’re a trained member and you do your probation and all that. I think she was fairly impressed by the way Michelle took down the intruder with a bow and arrow while he had a gun pointed at our heads, and mum’s always had good aim, State archery champ when she was younger a few times, stuff like that-”

“I remember.”

“She doesn’t shoot it much, but she does go to the club about once a month I guess, just to use it and so she doesn’t lose her skills. She’s actually pretty popular there…it’s mostly young guys, you know? Cops too. They’re impressed by her, she hits the target with better accuracy than most, and she’s been real open about why she’s there and how it gives her back a sense of control. She thinks it’s fun too, as any archer might. Dad hates it, of course. I think she’d go more often if he let up on her.”

“Well…at least we have them if we need them,” Angie said, as Oscar finished loading the handgun. “I’m sure it will be fine though. Danni said there’s nothing to suggest any of our information was leaked, it’s just Mac.”

“Just Mac’s real name, a video of her at her home, and the fact that she was attacked in the middle of an operation at a location she’s only been arriving at for the past week, via our undercover unit that no one is meant to know about.”

“True,” Angie said softly, her blue eyes wide and concerned. “I don’t know what to think. She might have still been attacked by the same guy who did the others. It was outside the park, sure, but it was basically the same M.O.; try to bash her face in.”

“Danni wouldn’t even tell you where she was,” Oscar said. “That’s how serious they’re taking it.”

“They’ve probably put her in a hotel somewhere,” Angie agreed. “You uh, you don’t think they’d actually send her away into some kind of protective custody based on this, right? Not before we got a chance to say goodbye?”

“Not without any evidence she’s actually been sold out or targeted, what happened to her is still all mixed up in the case we were working,” Oscar said as he handed Angie the gun so that she could get a feel for it, just in case. “Careful, it’s loaded.”

“I know Stoney,” Angie said as she rolled her eyes. “I am a Senior Constable, same as you, who’s been sitting here watching you for the last half an hour.”

He chuckled and shrugged as she examined the chamber and settled the gun’s weight in her palms. 

“It is a beautiful weapon,” she admitted.

“Mum has style,” Oscar said. “And anyway, Mac still could’ve been hit over the head by the guy Sex Crimes is after. This whole thing could be a bizarre coincidence.”

“Yeah, and Kiera could have been killed for the drugs, too,” Angie said. “I don’t see Lachlan Fraser doing that, but maybe she got into something heavier than cannabis for her mum. Or maybe someone tried to buy the information about Mac and she didn’t come through or asked for more money, so maybe no one knows any more about Mac than the basics. Danni just said we should be more cautious than usual.”

“Hence, the weapons check,” Oscar said as he happily and demonstrably swept his arm around the bench. Angie chuckled as she returned the handgun to its place on the towel they had laid down there. 

“Maybe now the stock are secure in the back paddock,” she said. “Then once we tear down the rotting stairs out front this afternoon, instead of rushing and trying to build them up again before dark, we could do some archery practice as well?”

“Sounds like fun,” Oscar said. “Mum would be so proud.”

“I bet you were a good little archer in your day,” Angie said with a grin. “She would have taught her oldest son her sport.”

“I’m still a good little archer. Remember when I tried to teach you six years ago? Which one of us hit all our targets, and which one of us hit none of them?”

“I hit a target when it mattered most, thank you very much,” Angie pointed out with a playful smirk. “And it was a moving target too, with a gun pointed at the back of your head, and I was scared out of my bloody mind.”

“I remember,” he said more softly as he reached across the bench and squeezed her arm. “And we all were scared…I tell you what though, I’ll make the stationary target extra big this time, so you can hit one standing still.”

“Oh-ha-ha,” Angie said, though they both laughed. Angie sighed though, as Oscar began to pack away the guns. “I really don’t want Mac to disappear while we’re up here, Oscar. We didn’t come out here on the best of terms with her-”

“Ange, you did nothing wrong.”

“I insinuated that she didn’t know what love was. I basically called her frigid.”

“She was doped up to the eyeballs on pain meds in hospital,” Oscar said. “Trust me, Mac is fully aware that she is not a warm and cuddly person. Peter Church is more of a softie, and that is really saying something, since he’s spent twenty years pretending to be a hardnosed asshole in the company of a wide variety of the city’s lowlifes.”

“What if Mac secretly is warm and cuddly though?” Angie asked. 

“That would be very weird,” Oscar stated. “She’s not, trust me. Pete and I had a big conversation in the surveillance van the other day about how she doesn’t want kids. She’s a good person, a great cop, but she’s not affectionate. That’s why her and Bill Hollister were a good match. Before he died, he wasn’t very warm and cuddly either.”

“Do you think they would still be together if he didn’t get blown up?”

“Maybe,” Oscar said. “His kids were grown up, I don’t reckon he wanted any either.”

“That’s not the only measure of a person, you realise,” Angie said with a serious frown on her face. “I still think I hurt Mac’s feelings, she was talking to me about letting myself fall in love with you, and it was excellent advice – she was right of course – and I didn’t mean to laugh at her, so I need to apologise now she’s out of hospital and feeling better, and I can’t do that if she gets put in protective custody.”

“You want to go back?” Oscar asked warily. Angie pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“No, this is where I want to be. We do have to go back in a couple of weeks though. I just want her to be safe until then. I’m sure Danni and Pete can handle it. Right?”

“Ange, Mac and Pete know how to keep their heads down better than anyone, and Danni sounds like she’s in super-protective mode. Mac surviving the assault was a matter of good luck and good work by Mac, not because Danni and Peter were on the ball and doing their job to the best of their ability; they are not going to stuff this up.”

“Oscar,” Angie said as her frown deepened and her mouth dropped open. “You do hear yourself speaking, right? You’re being a bit of an asshole. I know you get tetchy when you’re worried, but if all this bullshit is true then it is not Danni and Pete’s fault that Mac got attacked…and in fact it’s probably bloody good luck that she was attacked where she was, and not in her home. Imagine if someone did that to her in her home, and not in public. They’d have all the time in the world to properly kill her, maybe to rape her first, make her suffer…we wouldn’t know it until she just didn’t turn up for work the next day. Pete might go to her house and find her. Can we just appreciate that that is not what happened, and thank God for it a little bit?”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said softly as his face flushed. “I am worried, you’re right. I just…it’s easier for me to think of Mac as more like the stereotypical boss, and not an actual person, when it’s not like I can do anything to help from all the way out here.”

“I get that. But a week ago she started crying right in front of me and she was holding onto that sink really tight. I don’t think she’s doing too well? Just…remember that.”

“Why don’t we call her tonight,” Oscar said. “She has caller ID, she’ll answer her phone to us. We can say hi, and make sure she’s okay for ourselves.”

“I’d really like that Oscar,” Angie said as her eyes filled with tears. “This is a huge breach in security that’s come right out of left field, as they say. Mac could have multiple people after her now, and not even because they know her from a job, just because she’s out there as a cop. We don’t know who saw this information, we don’t know how Kiera even got this footage…I really doubt she filmed it herself.”

“She could have,” Oscar said. “But she would’ve needed a reason. Like, she would have been filming Mac already knowing who she was…It’s just a bit weird?”

“Yeah, it doesn’t sound right, Danni’s voice sounded weird about it. Maybe someone gave her that information to sell, like Lachlan or…well, not even Lachlan. If he didn’t know that Danni and Peter were cops, he certainly didn’t know anything about Mac.”

“There has to be a link between Kiera and Mac, or Mac and someone in Kiera’s circle,” Oscar explained. “Homicide will find it, with Mac’s help, I am sure of that.”

“This is all just going to Hell,” Angie said as she ran her fingers through her hair and rubbed her face. “Two weeks ago, it was great. Work was chugging along as usual, maybe we weren’t all always happy but the jobs were getting done, the boss was in a better mood than she had been for years, we were still having fun and working hard and we were all friends in our joint routines…and now our jobs are nowhere, the boss is in hiding days after being released from hospital, we’re up here and they’re down there and it’s just like our whole lives have disintegrated. Don’t you feel it?”

“Yeah,” Oscar said softly as his voice shook. “Yeah Ange, I do, that’s why I asked you to stay after the hospital. It’s why I don’t wanna let you out of my sight. It’s not just my work life that’s turning to shit, either. Look around, it’s my family too.”

“Your dad and brothers, I know. It’s okay Oscar, I won’t leave you,” Angie assured him as she reached across the bench for his hand. “I care about you too much.”

“Ah, never too much,” he teased with the best smile he could manage. Angie smiled at him in return, her eyes flickering with sadness. “Things will settle down, I hope.”

“Me too,” she whispered. “I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt. I loved my life two weeks ago Oscar. It’s gone now. It’s just…vanished.”

“Not vanished,” he assured her as he leant over the bench, over their weapons, and cupped her cheek with his hand. “It’s just changed, Ange. Hopefully for the better, but we might not know that for awhile.” 

*

“Are you going to tell me where she is?” Neil asked that night as he pulled his car to a stop outside the suburban home with Danni in the front passenger seat. She met his eyes and shook her head. 

“No,” she said simply. “I think considering where we are right now, the less people who know where to find Mac, the better.”

“We will need to speak to her.”

“Sure. She can come to you, not the other way around. I can arrange it.”

“She’s still in the city though, yes?” Neil asked with a hopeful smile.

“Yes,” Danni confirmed carefully. He chuckled and she raised her eyebrows at him. “With all due respect, Inspector, if you expect me to bow down to the new boss and throw my old boss under the bus in the process, you’ll be waiting a while. Undercover is…a unique bonding experience. I’ve been there five years. I trust you, I even like you, but I don’t know you all that well as yet, and I will die before I put Mac at risk.”

“I understand,” Neil said as they took off their seatbelts and got out of the car. “But just to put you at ease, I like Ellen, she’s a friend. I know her history with my predecessor; she could have given me a hard time in light of Bill Hollister’s death and me taking his job, but she hasn’t. She did turn down my latest job offer though.”

“I think Mac’s always liked working with your lot, not for them,” Danni said. “I wouldn’t take it to heart. She’s got some shifting priorities in her life right now.” 

“What are your priorities?” he asked. They walked slowly up the driveway; there was no rush. The front door was open and guarded by a uniformed officer, while the backyard was clearly bathed in bright lights visible from the street. 

“Make Detective,” Danni answered. “It’s what I’ve always wanted. I’ve got Mac to thank for helping to make it happen.”

Neil cleared his throat obviously and Danni laughed.

“Oh, and you Inspector, for hiring me.”

“Thank you,” he quipped. “Do you have a family? It’s occurred to me that I haven’t asked, and it’s something I like to know about all my people. Rest assured it has nothing to do with you becoming the only female Detective, in joining us.”

“It’s fine,” Danni said. “I’m single, no children…and good luck trying to have it any other way in Undercover. You?”

“Two kids,” he said with a smile. They stopped outside the front door for Neil to dig his wallet out of his back pocket and flip it open. “Charlotte – Lottie – and Max.”

“Cute!” Danni said as she looked at the picture of a little girl with fair skin, freckles, green eyes and straight brown hair, and a younger boy with the same fair skin and freckles, but brown eyes and curly, bright red hair. 

“Yep,” he said as he put the photo and wallet back in his pants pocket. “They’re eight and five, and everything I earn that doesn’t go on housing and food goes to paying for a live-in nanny. So I do understand the balancing act, I know it’s tough.”

“Especially when you’re called to scenes like this right on what would probably be bath and bed time?”

“Exactly,” Neil said. He gestured for Danni to go in ahead of him and reminded her to stick to the wall, where a special mat had been laid out. It traced a path through the house to the back door, where half a dozen officers were focusing their attention.

Neil and Danni stopped where the mat ended and stared down at their male corpse. 

The body had been cut down from the pergola’s wooden beam and was lying in an unzipped body bag. His hands were being covered in plastic to ensure any forensic material under his fingernails could be examined at the morgue. Bruising was just visible around his thick neck. His tongue was swollen and protruded from cut lips. His eyes were closed but there was evidence of swelling and trauma beneath the lids. It had been a genuine hanging, Danni decided as she crossed her arms over her chest. 

“You okay?” Neil asked. “First dead body?”

“No, I’ve seen these types before, but it’s been awhile.”

“Any time you need air at a crime scene, you can take it.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him. She stood taller, she was two inches taller than Neil in her heels, but her arms remained crossed. “I’m just disappointed,” she said. 

“You’ve been to this house before?” Neil asked. 

Danni nodded in silence as she watched the rope being carefully bagged as well. 

“Do you recognise the victim?” Neil asked.

“Yes,” Danni said as she looked back down at the body, just as the bag was closed. The swollen, suffocated face was soon obscured by blue plastic. “Lachlan Fraser.”

“Inspector,” a uniformed Constable who worked with Homicide said as he approached. He was holding a piece of paper sandwiched flat into a plastic sheath. “The note.”

“Thanks Cullen,” Neil said as he took it in his hands. He held it between himself and Danni so that she could read it as well. “I did an awful thing. I’m sorry,” Neil read aloud. “At least it’s concise. It doesn’t help us though. Lachlan Frasier. Shit.”

“How soon until we find out if this is a genuine suicide?” Danni asked. There was a lot riding on this investigation now, possibly Ellen’s entire future, as well as Peter’s.

“This is our priority now,” Neil said. “This and Kiera. Welcome to Homicide, Danni.”


End file.
